Frank Field, the Labour MP for Birkenhead, is a Brexiteer and has written a typically error strewn piece for The Sunday Express (HERE) saying we need to "toughen up" against the EU and basically urging his fellow MPs not to accept any of the Lord's amendments when the withdrawal bill comes back to The House later this month. He makes some assertions which are just plain wrong. After years in the House and two years after the referendum he still doesn't understand the basics.
First of all he thinks leave would win a second referendum.
"My guess is that more people would support a leave vote now that they have seen how nasty our EU colleagues have been in negotiating Brexit".
I wouldn't be so sure if I was him. But then as an example how nasty the EU can be he says:
"After the Irish voted not to agree another Treaty, the commission required Ireland to vote and vote and vote again, until the Irish voters gave up and agreed".
The EU did not "force" Ireland to "vote and vote and vote again". The EU don't have the power to do it for a start but new referendums were held in Ireland on both the Nice and Lisbon treaties because in each case the Irish government went back to the EU and obtained concessions which answered the concerns of voters. In one case, NO campaigners specifically said if the referendum resulted in a NO vote, it would be possible to to get some concessions. Voters were then asked to vote on a slightly different treaty, with revisions that addreesed their concerns and made the NO arguments redundant. They were also made aware that voting NO a second time would mean leaving the EU, which they could have done. This short blog post on the LSE site (HERE) explains it in more detail.
Irish voters did not "give up and agree", they thought about it again, with the new concessions and assurances obtained and voted YES. And he just does not get the EU or the WTO at all:
"We must act similarly with access to the single market. The Government must make plain that it will keep us aligned to the regulatory system for the immediate future so that the EU cannot have any justifiable reason of putting up trade barriers".
"On the Irish border we should make plain that we have no intention of implementing border controls during the transition period or afterwards".
"If the EU wishes to have border controls, so be it. It will be on their heads. The Government should elevate fudge as a new principle of politics. It should give up this game of thinking these negotiations can be settled quickly. They can’t".
We can keep as closely aligned as we like, this is a UK decision, but it won't make any difference to the EU since we will be outside the surveillance, inspection and enforcement mechanisms. We would be beyond the reach of the EU agencies and the ECJ. And the EU will not be "putting up trade barriers", they are already there (we helped to build every one) and we have simply decided to place ourselves outside them.
If we get a transition period there won't be any change to the Irish border anyway, so it's not clear what Field is even talking about there. Afterwards, if we are outside the CU and the SM there must be border controls no matter what. The EU are bound to have border controls because if they do not every third country will demand the same concession under the WTO most favoured nation rule which demands a country treats every other country equally.
As for elevating fudge to be a new principle of politics - well, I think Mrs May is doing that already.
