Brexit Unfolded : How No One Got What They Wantand Why They Were Never Going to (9781785906930) by Grey Chris

Author:Grey, Chris
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lightning Source Inc
Published: 2021-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

The Malthouse Compromise

As these votes progressed, a new, somewhat related, Brexit rabbit hole was opened up. The grandiosely named ‘Malthouse Compromise’, named after housing minister Kit Malthouse and more prosaically called ‘Plan C’ consisted, confusingly, of a Plan A and a Plan B.90 As mentioned above, there was nothing new about either of them. They were retreads or amalgamations of various documents that had been circulated by the ERG and allied groups for several months. But, significantly, this initiative had the support of some of those on the more remain wing of the Tory Party, such as Nicky Morgan who had been one of the Amendment 7 rebels. That significance, again, was a purely domestic one – it was designed to broker a compromise, or shared position, between these two wings. That is to say, the Malthouse Compromise was not a proposal for a compromise between UK and EU positions but between the factions within the Tory Party.

Malthouse Plan A was effectively the existing Withdrawal Agreement with the backstop ripped out, to be replaced by ‘alternative arrangements’. So, essentially, the Brady Amendment. If Plan A failed then Plan B was effectively the ‘managed no deal’ canard, whereby there would be no Withdrawal Agreement but, nevertheless, an agreed transition period and various side deals on security and so on. Implicitly, as with Plan A, the envisaged future trade relationship was Canada +++, but Plan B also invoked the more recent ERG factoid, GATT Article XXIV (discussed in the previous chapter).

All these ideas had been endlessly debunked by a series of experts yet, whilst not going so far as to endorse it, May called the Malthouse Compromise ‘a serious proposal that we are engaging with sincerely and positively’. Given that, by virtue of the Brady Amendment, she had committed to go back to Brussels again to try to amend the backstop she had more or less embraced Malthouse Plan A. And there could be little doubt that what most of the ‘Malthousers’ wanted from that was for it to be removed altogether. Otherwise, presumably, most of them wouldn’t support any amended deal when it came to the ‘second meaningful vote’. Then, the pressure would be on the government to adopt Malthouse Plan B as the pre-ordained direction of travel from Plan A. As so often, May was unwilling or unable to confront her backbenchers with reality.

A useful way of thinking about all this is to imagine the converse situation. Suppose that the EU had, at this late stage, announced that despite what had been agreed in the negotiations it would only be by, say, increasing the financial settlement and changing the backstop back to being Northern Ireland only that it would be possible to secure sufficient support from the European Council and Parliament. The outrage of Brexiters can easily be guessed at, and the UK response would almost certainly have been a flat refusal.

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