I absolutely agree. It is vital that we get the best deal—not that we have the power to determine the deal at every stage.
The Opposition have accepted at many stages that we must not tie the Government’s hands. In the October motion, it was accepted across the House that the process must
“not undermine the negotiating position of the Government as negotiations are entered into”.
The shadow Secretary of State stated in the course of that debate that
“navigating our exit from the EU will not be an easy process, and it will require shrewd negotiating”
and that we
“must put the national interest first”.—[Official Report, 12 October 2016; Vol. 615, c. 323.]
He accepted that there had to be a degree of confidentiality and flexibility. He repeated those very words today. Those statements, which the Opposition have repeatedly made, must be honoured and remembered, because we made some strategic errors when we first negotiated in Europe.
To the Spaak Committee meetings of 1955 that eventuated in the treaty of Rome, we sent a sole British delegate, a minor trade official called Russell Bretherton. He was eventually summoned home on the grounds that Britain should have no part in what a more senior civil servant described as this
“mysticism which appeals to European… federalists”.
Interviewed in later life about the experience, Bretherton said:
“If we had been able to say that we agreed in principle, we could have got whatever kind of common market we wanted. I have no doubt of that at all.”
Now, we have an opportunity to renegotiate our role in Europe and the rest of the world. I do not want to say to my children that we did not get the best deal because of our fear, our scepticism, our adversarial parliamentary system, political point scoring and, possibly, ulterior political motives. I do not want to say that we restricted ourselves in negotiating the right arrangement for our long-term future.
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