Sign up to our free Brexit and beyond email for the latest headlines on what Brexit is meaning for the UKSign up to our Brexit email for the latest insightSign up to our Brexit email for the latest insight<\/p>\n
I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our\u00a0privacy policy<\/p>\n
Of all the hallucinations of the Brexit deadlock period, the vision of Dominic Cummings dining at Dishoom off Kingsland Road in east London with Jeremy Corbyn\u2019s advisers, Matt Zarb-Cousin and James Schneider, is like a fever dream. <\/p>\n
But no, it really happened, and is revealed by Patrick Maguire and Gabriel Pogrund in their book on Labour\u2019s path to power, Get In, to be published this month. In early 2019, Cummings, the wild genius of the Leave campaign, wanted to help Corbyn become prime minister to save Brexit. <\/p>\n
This may seem to be another curio of those extraordinary few years of British parliamentary history. The House of Commons rejected Theresa May\u2019s terms for leaving the EU, yet it refused to leave without a deal and it refused to allow a general election. <\/p>\n
Much of what happened in that nightmare of paralysis now seems irrelevant. The meaningful votes, the indicative votes, the backbench MPs passing legislation against the wishes of the government, the prorogation struck down by the Supreme Court \u2013 all swept aside and forgotten when Boris Johnson finally broke the logjam and forced an election. <\/p>\n
But Cummings\u2019s shocking plan to persuade Labour MPs to vote for May\u2019s deal and split the Conservative Party still matters for the future \u2013 particularly for the debate in the Labour Party about a closer relationship with the EU. <\/p>\n
At the time, in 2019, I had many conversations with Labour MPs who felt that they ought to vote for May\u2019s deal for fear of ending up with worse \u2013 which is precisely what happened. They could have had a \u201csoft\u201d Brexit, but too many of them were distracted by the possibility of stopping Brexit altogether, or they came under pressure from their activists to demand a second referendum. <\/p>\n
\u2018Cummings wanted to get Britain out of the EU, and if May\u2019s deal meant a Labour government and Corbyn as prime minister, so be it\u2019 (PA Wire)Corbyn himself resisted that pressure for a long time. As a lifelong opponent of EU membership, he tried to keep alive the case for a \u201cLabour\u201d Brexit in a party that was strongly pro-EU, before he was eventually outmanoeuvred by Keir Starmer, his shadow Brexit secretary. <\/p>\n
Hence Cummings\u2019s desperate plan. What is remarkable about it is that he saw at the time another of the advantages for Labour of backing May\u2019s deal: that it would split the Tory party. Yet he didn\u2019t care. He wanted to get Britain out of the EU, and if that meant a Labour government and Corbyn as prime minister, so be it. <\/p>\n
He saw things more clearly, it must be said, than some of May\u2019s advisers did. Another vivid memory of that period was a conversation with someone in No 10 who asked me why Labour MPs wouldn\u2019t back her deal \u2013 \u201cThey really ought to, you know.\u201d <\/p>\n
I agreed, but I did not point out that, if they did, it would destroy the Tory party. A large contingent of Tory MPs would have continued to oppose the deal, depriving May of her majority. She might have continued as prime minister to oversee our departure from the EU, but she would have to rely on Labour votes in the Commons. She would have been a mirror-image of Ramsay MacDonald, a Labour prime minister at the head of a Conservative government. <\/p>\n
Or \u2013 and this was Cummings\u2019s view \u2013 the Tory split would have forced a general election, which Labour might have won on a promise to save the NHS. \u201cYou get Brexit through,\u201d he texted Zarb-Cousin, and there would be a \u201chigh chance of government collapse and election pre-August, but Tory civil war guaranteed for years in any scenario\u201d. <\/p>\n
What is of interest to historians is Cummings\u2019s contempt for Boris Johnson in this period. When May announced her resignation in May, he texted Zarb-Cousin again: \u201cThe destruction of the Tories proceeds apace, comrade. Boris is their last gasp at ignoring reality. When that fails \u2026 kaboom.\u201d<\/p>\n
Within weeks he was chief adviser to the new prime minister and central to his successful effort to \u201cGet Brexit Done\u201d. But it was no wonder that their relationship broke down soon afterwards. <\/p>\n
What matters to the future, though, is that Cummings was right not to care about the precise form that Brexit took. The British people voted to be out of the political structures of the EU and the free movement area. Theresa May\u2019s deal would have secured those objectives, while keeping us in a close trade relationship including a customs union. <\/p>\n
It would have been a compromise, but given the closeness of the referendum result, it would have better respected the will of the people. It was no accident that, when the Commons held those indicative votes to try to break the deadlock, the customs union option, proposed by Ken Clarke, the Tory former chancellor, won the most support. <\/p>\n
Keir Starmer should take his cue from Cummings in pursuing his EU \u201creset\u201d. He should seek a customs union with the EU. The director of the Vote Leave campaign supported it. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sign up to our free Brexit and beyond email for the latest headlines on what Brexit is meaning for the UKSign up to our Brexit email for the latest insightSign up to our Brexit email for the latest insight I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our\u00a0privacy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4102,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[173],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n