Daily Briefing: Both major parties in a shambles on Brexit

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Name your favourite political -ism. There’s Marxism of course, always a fan favourite. And Thatcherism, a popular choice too. Blairism? Boo hiss. Cameroonism? Or Cameronism? I was never quite sure. Brownism? Let’s not go there.

So what to make of ‘cake-ism’? The perfect way to describe Corbyn’s manoeuvres on Brexit. He has perfected the ‘have your cake and eat it’ motif into a kind of performance art. Yes to the customs union (after much vacillation), no to the single market, but wait. Yes to a plan to keep Britain in the “internal market” with “full access” to the single market, but not in the EEA precisely, and retaining “shared institutions and regulations” with Brussels.

This is real ‘see cake eat cake’ territory. Remaining locked into the single market will mean freedom of movement (as it does for the countries who already have that arrangement like Lichtenstein) which would play very badly with much of Labour’s dwindling working class base. But a commitment to deliver a soft Brexit with some of the benefits of a harder Brexit will appeal to metropolitan Remainers. And in reality, it’s a trade-off he won’t actually have to make.

As Henry Newman, of Open Europe, put it today: “It’s opposition politics so you can promise unicorns.”

I can’t think of an appropriate morality fable with unicorns to describe the government’s torpor over Brexit. Maybe Three Little Pigs and the wolf is the Irish border problem? Iain has a good go in the Times tomorrow – the government handling of Brexit looks like a rerun of the boy who cried wolf: “There was a wolf. And the sheep got eaten.”

There is still no definite negotiating position as we head into the crucial European council meeting in July. That was thrown into sharp relief by the outbreak of a row between leading Brexiteers, David Davis and Theresa May. It revolves around Theresa May’s decision to push for a ‘backstop’ arrangement that retains key features of our current relationship with Europe after Britain has formally exited the European Union. Davis is said to be troubled that there is no time limit set on the backstop; hard Brexiteers reject that we need a backstop mechanism at all.

You might not like the idea of a backstop Brexit, but that is effectively what we’re going to get. More vacillation; and more uncertainty for business for the foreseeable future.

At PMQs today, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn put May under pressure on the subject.

Will the last person to leave, please turn out the lights? And no, I’m not talking about backstop Brexit Britain. In Venezuela, until recently Corbyn’s favourite regime, the lights really have been switched off. For months, the benighted socialist state has suffered extended black outs. The Maduro government’s response? It’s just that time of the year. “We are very close to the Sun” said Lizandro Cabello, government secretary of the state of Zulia: “While the rest of the world is cold, it is hot here, that just makes the situation more serious.”

Remember, socialism has never been tried properly. Er…

Alastair Benn

News and Features editor