Shock! Tory MP states the obvious: we will get closer to the EU in time

Tobias Ellwood has merely said the quiet part out loud about our future relationship with the EU, writes John Rentoul

Ellwood gets top marks for honesty (PA)

Top marks for honesty to Tobias Ellwood, persistent Conservative rebel. He said the quiet part out loud yesterday, suggesting that Britain should consider an EU relationship like Norway’s, part of the single market but outside the political structures of the union.

Brexit had not turned out to be what “most people imagined”, he wrote in The House magazine. “Sector after sector is being strangled by the red tape we were supposed to escape from.”

The Labour Party won’t say it. Even the Liberal Democrats are keeping quiet about it – a silence that has absolutely nothing to do with the 60 per cent Leave vote in the Tiverton and Honiton constituency in Devon where there is a by-election pending. Two cheers for Ellwood for speaking out.

Keir Starmer’s silence is more deafening than Ed Davey’s, and more strategic. Starmer’s calculation goes beyond the 60 per cent Leave vote in Wakefield, a Labour target seat where there is also a by-election pending. Labour’s policy is not to interrupt its opponents when they are making mistakes, and Boris Johnson is making plenty of those. The last thing Starmer wants to do is to remind people that the overwhelming majority of Labour MPs and party members want to rejoin the EU.

Most of them also realise they must not say so, as noted by Tom Harris yesterday. Harris, a former Labour MP who was not a member of the majority in his party (indeed, he was the head of the cross-party Leave campaign in Scotland), said Labour’s refusal to comment on Ellwood’s article, “is all the proof you need that Keir Starmer has brought a level of discipline to his front bench that is, in all seriousness, rather impressive.”

This must be immensely frustrating for Labour people, because it means they cannot point out that although Ellwood means well, he is going about it the wrong way. Anyone serious about repairing the economic damage of Brexit would not be interested in the Norway model. There are only three positions that make any sense. There is “make Brexit work”, which is Labour’s current policy: refuse to contemplate renegotiating the treaties and talk about a food standards deal that could ease the Northern Ireland border problem, which is not so far from the government’s negotiating position.

It was notable that Tony Blair this week set out a proposal that was remarkably close to the government’s view – that the Ireland protocol is a “bad deal” and that the EU needs to show “significant movement” from its stated position to make it work.

The second position would be to revive Theresa May’s compromise, by the UK rejoining the EU customs union. This is different from joining the EU single market, because rejoining the single market would require the UK to accept free movement of people. Being in the customs union, though, would solve the Northern Ireland problem. It would prevent the UK from negotiating its own trade deals with other countries, but as the only deals we have negotiated have been rollover deals of the terms we had as a member of the EU, no one would actually care about that. Although some of Ellwood’s colleagues would pretend to.

And the third position is to rejoin the EU. Then at least the UK would gain representation and influence in return for accepting free movement. Personally, I think six years is too soon to be trying to reverse a decision in a referendum (and I doubt that the EU would want us anyway); it is striking that not only the Lib Dems but Best for Britain, which is what the Remain campaign has rebranded itself, think so too.

Ellwood should be arguing for rejoining the EU customs union, if, as he claims, he wants to think outside the box. But given the conspiracy of silence from his fellow former Remainers, that too would be greeted only by the sound of rejoicing from the defenders of Boris Johnson’s hard Brexit.

I understand that No 10 was delighted with Ellwood’s free thinking, because he is one of the Tory MPs who have demanded a vote of no confidence in the prime minister – they can now dismiss the letter-writers as mostly embittered supporters of EU membership.

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Tom Tugendhat, so far the only declared candidate against the prime minister, was also pleased with Ellwood’s comments, declaring: “Tobias is wrong.” As a former Remainer himself, Tugendhat used the moment to declare himself reborn as a Brexiteer: “The single market puts the EU in charge,” he said. “EU rules; open borders; no new trade deals. We need a deal British people control not foreign laws with no say. Let’s plan for the future and stop looking back. This decision is made.”

That will disappoint a lot of Tugendhat’s admirers, most of whom do not have a vote in the next Tory leadership election. They know that Tobias is not completely wrong. He said the unsayable: the UK is bound to have a closer relationship with the EU in future.

I suspect that, if the Conservatives lose their majority at the next election, a minority Labour government might rejoin the EU customs union. Yet Starmer and his surprisingly disciplined party have to deny it categorically before the election. Only a Tory rebel can come close to speaking the truth.