Charles Moore

I may have spoken too soon when I predicted that the Daily Mail might not suffer from its Brexit volte-face. At the Daily Telegraph’s Christmas charity phone-in last Sunday, I was struck by how many donating readers mentioned the Mail’s desertion, and by reports of recruitment by the Telegraph of disconsolate Mail readers. There are rumours that the Mail’s new editor, Geordie Greig, has personally rung to plead with readers who are cancelling their subscriptions. Geordie is a charming man, but obviously he cannot speak to all the disgruntled tens of thousands. The Mail has chosen to switch from an insurgent to an establishment position just when that establishment is more discredited than at any time since the 1930s.

Inside the Dominic Grieve amendment carried on Tuesday is the embryo of a new political party. Any parliamentary majority for what Sir Oliver Letwin, who voted for the amendment, calls ‘something real’ (‘Norway plus’) if Mrs May’s deal falls would depend on the support of a good many Labour MPs. After three months’ work, the organisers believe they have got 75 such on board, led by Chuka Umunna. These are anti-Brexit, chiefly Blairite Labour MPs who cannot bear Jeremy Corbyn. If their number held up (a big ‘if’), the organisers calculate, the House could carry ‘Norway plus’, with the government and most Conservative backbenchers supporting, even if the ‘hard’ Brexiteers opposed. Labour would be split.

‘Civilisation faces collapse, Attenborough warns UN.’ That was the Times headline on Tuesday about the great broadcaster’s speech at the latest climate change conference in Poland. In theory, Sir David is always worth hearing. Nevertheless, his solemn warning was made less effective by the decision to print it at the bottom of page 17. I cannot help feeling that this adverse news judgment was entirely correct.

Theresa May, William Hague and others say that the EU will not want to trap Britain in the backstop because it is not in its interest. It will want to move to a free-trade agreement for its own benefit. If that is so, why is the backstop the thing above all others upon which the EU insists? Brexiteers must absolutely oppose the backstop because agreeing it would repeat Britain’s delusion in every European negotiation over nearly 50 years, which is that we should grab ‘practical’ advantages and concede ‘windy’ principles. This sounds good, but it invariably means that we are trapped later. The principles acquire legal force.

Theresa May, William Hague and others say that the EU will not want to trap Britain in the backstop because it is not in its interest. It will want to move to a free-trade agreement for its own benefit. If that is so, why is the backstop the thing above all others upon which the EU insists? One reason why Brexiteers have to oppose the backstop absolutely is that it is yet another manifestation of Britain’s delusion in every European negotiation over nearly 50 years, which is that we should grab ‘practical’ advantages and concede ‘windy’ principles. This sounds good, but it invariably means that we are trapped later. The principles acquire legal force.

Article 129 (3) of the withdrawal agreement provides that ‘the United Kingdom shall refrain, during the transition period, from any action or initiative which is likely to be prejudicial to the Union’s interests, in particular in the framework of any international organisation, agency, conference or forum of which the United Kingdom is a party in its own right.’ What does that mean? That we are not free at the UN Security Council to oppose any item of EU foreign policy? That we cannot cut our rate of VAT? That we must not make jokes about Jean-Claude Juncker? Needless to say, there is no reciprocal obligation on the EU to do nothing prejudicial to the interests of the United Kingdom.

‘It’s time for Bond — Basildon Bond,’ is the joke among pro-Leave MPs as Theresa May serves up her mess of pottage as Brexit. Market research, however, shows the joke does not work on MPs under 40 because they do not know what Basildon Bond is. So perhaps I should explain to the hip Spectator crowd that Basildon Bond remains the commonest brand of quality paper on which to write letters. There need to be 48 such letters sent to Graham Brady, the chairman of the 1922 Committee, to provoke a vote of confidence in Mrs May among Conservative MPs. There are certainly far more than 48 who do not, in fact, have confidence in her. It does not automatically follow, needless to say, that they will say so when asked.

It’s time for Bond — Basildon Bond,’ is the joke among pro-Leave MPs as Theresa May serves up her mess of pottage as Brexit. Market research, however, shows the joke does not work on MPs under 40 because they do not know what Basildon Bond is. So perhaps I should explain to the hip Spectator crowd that Basildon Bond remains the commonest brand of quality paper on which to write letters. There need to be 48 such letters sent to Graham Brady, the chairman of the 1922 Committee, to provoke a vote of confidence in Mrs May among Conservative MPs. There are certainly far more than 48 who do not, in fact, have confidence in her. It does not automatically follow, needless to say, that they will say so when asked.

The campaign ‘Norway for Now’, an idea promoted by Nick Boles, is that Britain should join the European Economic Area and EFTA, until such time as we can move further out of the EU, for example with a Canada-style free-trade deal. This is what Norway and Iceland and Liechtenstein do. The idea sounds nice as a friendly and temporary compromise. But in fact the psychology is wrong. Such arrangements were devised more as an entry chamber to full membership (which is what Norwegian elites still want) than as part of an exit strategy. The Norwegian Prime Minister is now making this point. The point of Leave is to escape the gravitational pull of Brussels. Why make self-contradictory efforts to stay in the orbit and leave it at the same time?

At the Brexit-related cabinet last week — as revealed by James Forsyth in these pages — David Lidington made an intervention in support of the Prime Minister’s approach to the negotiations. He was, he said, the only person present who had been an MP at the time of ‘Black Wednesday’, when the pound fell out of the ERM on 16 September 1992. It had been so disastrous and divisive, he went on, that the government must at all costs avoid a repeat over Brexit. Many heads nodded sagely. Mr Lidington, a moderate and public-spirited man, was quite right about the pain caused to his party 26 years ago; but the interests of the Tories and of the nation are not necessarily the same thing.

There is much shock professed about the metaphors used to describe Mrs May’s political plight — talk of the ‘killing zone’, or her being stabbed, and worse. I feel this shock myself, but in fact such metaphors are routine in politics and almost always have been. Think, for example, of Harold Macmillan’s ‘Night of the Long Knives’ — arguably more tasteless, since it compared a cabinet reshuffle with a Nazi murder spree. The real reason it seems shocking in this case surely, as it did when John McDonnell favourably invoked people who wanted to lynch Esther McVey, is that it is men speaking about a woman. On this, old-fashioned chivalry and modern feminism agree.

Do you remember that brief couple of weeks in British history when we all had to say ‘I agree with Nick’? It seems a long time ago, and now Sir Nick Clegg is off to Silicon Valley to be the head of Facebook’s global affairs and communications team. Some sneer, but the move makes perfect sense. Correctly clocking that he has no future in British politics, and that the European Union is not an area of growth and opportunity, he thinks that the United States has a brighter future than our common European home. I agree with Nick. This article is an extract from Charles Moore's Spectator notes, available in this week's magazine.