Evening Standard comment: Tories’ rift over customs union is a gift for Corbyn

Evening Standard Comment22 February 2018

Cabinet members meet today at Chequers for home-made cream tea and to resolve a homemade Tory mess about customs unions.

The referendum decision to leave the EU did not imply Britain had to leave the Customs Union we have with our European export markets.

After all, Turkey is a member of that Customs Union but not the EU. Had we decided there and then to remain in the Customs Union, yes, we would have foregone the illusory prospect that Britain might in future sign free-trade deals with China and America to allow more Chinese steel imports and US firms to bid for NHS contracts.

But we would have avoided all the current arguments about the Irish border, the Good Friday Agreement, the queues at Dover, the need for thousands more customs staff, the uncertainty for British exporters and the extra cost for British consumers of European imports.

Instead of making a clear decision, Downing Street havered.

A year ago, speaking at Lancaster House, the Prime Minister said she had an “open mind” about our post-Brexit customs arrangements and floated the idea of becoming an “associate member of the Customs Union” (the capital letters are important in this complex debate).

Last month, held to ransom by the Brexit hardline minority in the party, No 10 shifted position and ruled out any membership of a customs union — without explaining how this act of protectionism is remotely consistent with streamlined “tariff-free” trade with Europe and an open border with Ireland.

Now the Brexit Committee meets to try to reach some compromise between the Brexiteer ideologues like the Foreign Secretary and the Tory pragmatists led by the Chancellor, all against a backdrop of today’s GDP downgrade, which confirms that a UK that once grew faster than the rest of Europe is now clearly growing more slowly.

Although the PM has not revealed her position to anyone, all the official advice she is receiving is that, at the very least, Britain should stay in a customs union with the EU for the trade in goods.

We will see what, if anything, emerges from the wood-panelled room on the first floor of the Jacobean stately home in Buckinghamshire.

Future prosperity

Perhaps it no longer matters. For the Tory divisions and ideological obsessions have left the door open for the Labour Opposition to lead on this.

Jeremy Corbyn unusually raised trade policy at PMQs yesterday and will give a speech on Monday on a “jobs-first Brexit”.

Almost all his shadow cabinet are urging him to commit to membership of a customs union, and he told engineering companies that “we have to have a customs union”.

At the same time, it looks like a growing number of Conservative MPs — pushing back against the ransom letter to Mrs May from the Brexit hardliners this week — would vote to stay in a customs union.

Outriders Anna Soubry and Ken Clarke have tabled the amendment, and with Labour’s support it would almost certainly be carried — the surest sign of which is that Tory whips have just delayed the vote.

All of this internal party debate may feel like pointless intrigue. But it matters hugely to our future prosperity.

Remember, the Government’s internal analysis shows that membership of a customs union would reduce the damage to our economy by trillions of pounds — especially in manufacturing heartlands like the North-East and West Midlands.

It also matters for the broader battle between the parties over who can be trusted with the economy.

It would be an irony if the Marxist-sympathiser Mr Corbyn emerged with a more pro-business policy than the Tories — but that is what the Brexiteers have opened the door to.

The rest of the Conservative Party, either over tea at Chequers or in the division lobbies, should move rapidly to close it by keeping us in a customs union with the EU.