Brexit: from the backstop to Boris, by Tim Shipman, paperback, 698 pages, ISBN 978-0-00-830894-0, William Collins, 2024, £26.
This is the third in Tim Shipman's magnificent account of the 2016 referendum and its after-effects. All Out War, published in 2016, and Fall Out, published in 2017; the final volume, Out, is to appear in June. The referendum had indeed "pitched popular direct democracy (where 52 per cent voted to Leave) against parliamentary democracy (where two thirds of MPs wanted to Remain)."
Under Theresa May's agonised, and agonising, premiership, it did indeed seem as if there would never be a way out of the EU. An intransigent EU did all it could to stop us leaving, and then when that failed, it did all it could to harm us..
Europhiles in London always dismiss claims that the EU sought to punish Britain for leaving. But François Hollande, the French president, said, "If we want to hand down some lesson here then it's important that there be a price. If it's all win-win to easily withdraw from the EU then that would mean the end of the European project." The EU agreed with the French President.
David Cameron had banned his cabinet secretary, Jeremy Heywood, from making any preparations for Brexit. A senior EU official criticised Heywood's failure to prepare: "It is always the obligation of politicians to say there is no plan B and there is always the obligation on civil servants to make sure that there is one." The British state was completely unready for independence.
In June 2018, May announced that the government planned to give the NHS £20 billion a year to mark its 70th anniversary. This was the biggest public services funding announcement in a generation. By 2024, the NHS would be getting an extra £600 million a week, partly funded from a 'Brexit dividend' once we stopped making payments to the EU.
This was to carry out the famous pledge on the side of Vote Leave's bus - an extra £350 million a week on the NHS. Remainers said this was Leave's big lie, so Brexiteers delivering on that pledge would shoot the Remainers' fox.
But May's Chancellor Philip Hammond fought tooth and nail against it, even suggesting that the NHS was not viable on a long-term basis. "Hammond was arguing throughout that we must not be seen to be delivering on that bus," an aide said.
In July 2018, two years and 13 days after the Brexit vote, the government produced a policy on Brexit. For the first time, May spelt out what Brexit she wanted - the Chequers deal, staying in the customs union - BRINO, Brexit in name only. She had provided a target for everyone to aim at. So the call to "chuck Chequers" quickly became the call to chuck its author - chuck May.
May did all she could to persuade MPs to support her deal. A major figure in the aviation industry approached May and pointed out that airports were prepared for no-deal. He said, "We could say all this publicly to put the public's mind at rest." May's aide replied, "No, thank you, we need no-deal to look as bad as possible."
In April, in the abortive talks with Labour, "Team May's mask slipped". They argued that the backstop was a customs union in all but name. Shipman observes, "This was emphatically not what cabinet ministers were told, either at Chequers the previous July, or in November when they were asked to endorse the deal." Barwell conceded in his memoir that they did not call May's deal a 'customs union' "because the phrase had become toxic for many Conservative MPs."
Shipman quotes a Downing Street aide: "Chequers was ultimately a customs union, but we couldn't call it that." As Shipman notes, May had "decided on customs union membership by any other name." So, for May, Brexit did not mean Brexit at all, it meant staying in the EU customs union.
On 21 May 2019, as Barwell recalled, "The prime minister said that cabinet had agreed we should offer a vote between two customs options and Parliamentary time for a decision on a confirmatory vote, with neither put on the face of the bill." But, as Shipman points out, "… when May set out her case in a speech at the offices of PwC, offering MPs 'one last chance', she went further: 'The government will … include in the withdrawal agreement bill … a requirement to vote on whether to hold a second referendum.'" The proposed bill said that if MPs voted for a second referendum, the government "will make arrangements for a referendum".
The proposed bill not only violated what she had pledged in the 21 May cabinet, it violated May's pledge to respect the result of the 2016 referendum.
Clearly, the May government sabotaged the process of leaving, in order to keep us in the EU. Later, the Johnson government sabotaged the benefits of leaving, betraying his pledge to "maximise the opportunities of Brexit."