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Liam Fox may be an arch Eurosceptic, but he backs Jeremy Hunt because, in the end, he is a realist too

The international trade secretary has tried to balance ‘wanting a deal’ and ‘being willing to walk away’. But even he must realise that the UK government can't overcome that fundamental deadlock

John Rentoul
Tuesday 04 June 2019 16:06 BST
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Jeremy Hunt confirms his bid for Conservative leadership

Apart from providing everyone with obvious jokes about fox hunting, what did Liam Fox, the international trade secretary, mean by backing Jeremy Hunt, the foreign secretary, for the Conservative leadership this morning?

It shows how shallow the Brexit debate still is that this should come as a surprise to people. Having been immersed for three years now in the reality of negotiating trade deals, Fox understands better than most the advantages of a negotiated exit from the EU.

He stayed in the cabinet and supported the prime minister as she tried to get her exit deal through parliament and, as a politician with no leadership ambition himself any more (he won 16 votes from MPs in the last contest), he wants to try to persuade his party to resist the lure of simply walking away from the EU without a deal.

I suspect this is a doomed mission. The emotional appeal of saying, as Nigel Farage and Donald Trump do, that the UK should just walk away is a powerful one. But even they say this should be a tactic to secure a better deal – although their emphasis is on the walking away. For them, a deal on our terms would be nice to have but not essential.

It is interesting that not even Dominic Raab, Andrea Leadsom and Esther McVey, the hardest-line candidates for the Tory leadership, propose a no-deal exit as their objective. They see a credible threat of walking away as the leverage to obtain the deal they want.

Which is what Fox said on the Today programme this morning. The differences between the Tory candidates is where they put the emphasis. Fox insists it should be equal between saying “we want a deal” and “if we can’t get an agreement we have to be willing to walk away”. As he said, “otherwise we have no negotiating hand”.

He tried to explain his “friend” Hunt’s colourful phrase about seeking a no-deal exit being “political suicide”. What Hunt meant, said Fox, was that setting a no-deal exit “as a goal” would be suicide for the Conservative Party. That is indeed what Hunt said – that trying to leave without a deal would be blocked by parliament, which would bring down the government, forcing a general election; and it would not be too colourful to suggest that an election, with Brexit undelivered, would be terminal for the Tory party.

“A candidate who wanted a no deal as a policy end, that would be very unpopular within the party,” said Fox. I think he was confusing what ought to be with what is, however. The Tory party has become so radicalised by the trauma of Brexit failure that a no-deal exit is now precisely what 66 per cent of its members want, according to the latest YouGov survey – and that would be “as a policy end”, never mind as a negotiating ploy. They agreed with the statement: “The government should take Britain out of the EU without agreeing a deal with the EU.”

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The problem, not just for Hunt but for all the candidates, is that the Tory party is too far gone to realise that, if it carries on following Pied Piper Farage down the road away from reality, Britain really is never going to leave the EU.

Hunt was right that parliament will not allow a no-deal exit, which means that Fox’s careful balancing of “wanting a deal” versus “being willing to walk away” doesn’t work. The threat of walking away has to be credible to be effective, and the EU side of the negotiations knows that parliament will not allow a no-deal Brexit.

It may be that the UK government ought to be able to threaten to walk away, but it can’t do it. That is why Brexit is stuck. Parliament won’t accept the only possible deal because it doesn’t like the arrangements for guaranteeing an open border in Ireland; and it won’t accept leaving without a deal.

Just because Hunt is an “entrepreneur by background” and “deal-making is part of his DNA”, as Fox put it this morning, it does not mean he can overcome that fundamental deadlock.

But at least Fox – and Hunt – are a bit more honest about not making an impossible promise to leave on 31 October, “deal or no deal”.

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