The post you are reporting:
From the Telegraph.
It would be difficult to imagine a more disastrous start to Britain’s negotiations to leave the European Union. A government without a majority, the two main parties committed to some form of “hard Brexit” (a term usually employed to describe our departure from the single market and customs union as well as from the EU itself) yet a supposed majority within the new Commons in favour of the opposite: a “soft” or “non” Brexit.
It would be easy – and entirely justified – to blame Theresa May for this latest farce. Let’s just take that as a given and move on to how we intend to shape the forthcoming discussions with our EU partners, most of whom, presumably, are watching events on this side of La Manche with incredulous glee. And who can blame them?
Today’s Telegraph splash will have sent a shiver down the spines of those Conservative MPs whose primary obsession in politics has been to extricate us from the EU. An ungodly alliance of pro-Remain Conservative MPs – including Cabinet ministers – and Labour MPs seek to water down Mrs May’s previous commitments to a hard Brexit, and to despatch her seemingly reckless (though as I have argued in the past, entirely sensible and necessary) threat to walk away from the negotiating table rather than accept a “bad deal”.
Just less than a year ago, I wrote of my astonishment that in the wake of a narrow victory by the Leave campaign, it was the Labour Party, not the Conservatives, that seemed to be falling apart at the seams. This was entirely contrary to the decades-long political narrative that held that it was the Tories under whom a deadly European fault line ran. But now, nearly a year later, these are ominous times for the party that took us into the Common Market and now wants to take us out.
Labour, on the other hand, is more united than it has been at any time since Jeremy Corbyn became leader and now has a ringside seat for the Great Conservative EU Implosion, part 22.
It is casually and confidently asserted that the recent election produced a House of Commons in which a majority of members oppose our leaving the EU altogether. This is probably true. However a slight complicating factor is that both the Conservative and Labour manifestos commit any government led by them to leave, not just the EU, but the single market too. It is, admittedly, less explicit in Labour’s, which merely states that “Freedom of movement will end when we leave the European Union”. But those seeking to interpret this in any other way than a commitment to leaving the single market would be hard pressed to explain how freedom of movement could end otherwise.
In other words, 88 per cent of MPs were elected on a manifesto commitment to leave the EU single market. Will this matter to Remain-supporting MPs on either side of the House? They might be forgiven for trying to slip out of their democratic mandate by pointing out that both Labour’s and the Conservatives’ manifestos were rejected by the electorate; parties generally don’t feel obliged to respect a losing mandate.