May’s Brexit deal hinges on Corbyn

Prime Minister Theresa May’s control over Brexit is slipping away. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, no doubt hoping to prevent further defections from his party, said he would support a “public vote” on Brexit. He gave no details, but it’s a significant shift in a politician who has never hidden his euroskepticism or opposition to a second referendum.
Whether another vote comes to pass, or Brexit is delayed, now depends very much on if the prime minister can convince lawmakers in her own party to back her deal. It is one of the more curious twists of the Brexit drama that this job – and thus the fate of May and her divorce deal – falls to a lawyer few had heard of a year ago. There is a simple reason for that: Geoffrey Cox may be only official left who critics of the prime minister’s deal feel they can trust.
It was the attorney general’s damning November legal advice, which the government was forced to publish, that largely motivated parliament to reject her deal in January. May is now hoping Cox will change his opinion and help her win over enough votes to pass the settlement agreement next month. Failing that, the fate of Brexit looks to be truly out of her hands.
The Cox Factor isn’t to be dismissed. He is possessed of a deep baritone voice, a sharp legal mind and a dramatic court-room presence; you can feel MPs lean in a little when he speaks. His
introductory speech to Theresa May’s Conservative Party conference address in October was a Churchillian barnstormer that left the Tory audience warming to May, a leader they normally barely tolerate. Even if he doesn’t enjoy the same kind of adulation among the party faithful as, say, Boris Johnson, Cox is still a lawyer who can work a jury. And yet it’s a measure of how few cards May has left that she must now rely so heavily on a lawyer’s ability to craft a convincing clause and to dress ambiguity in reassuring legalese.
Cox has been shuttling back and forth to Brussels with a brief to find a way through the impasse on the controversial Irish backstop in the Withdrawal Agreement. The idea of it, of course, is to avoid the need for any border infrastructure between Northern Ireland and Ireland. Cox had concluded that, as drafted, the clause could keep Britain tied indefinitely to the European Union’s customs union, with Northern Ireland tied even more closely to the bloc’s rules than the rest of the country.
It is true, as Cox argues, that if the future trade negotiations break down, then the EU would have no incentive to move things along since the UK would be stuck in the backstop. Equally, the EU worries that the UK would use any exit clause to weaponise the border issue in the future trade talks. With trust this scarce, no wonder it’s the lawyers who are in charge now.
The stakes here are enormous. If the EU were to provide sufficient assurances that the UK could exit the backstop, there is a good chance May’s deal would win approval in parliament given that both parties are committed to honoring the result of the 2016 referendum.
—Bloomberg

Therese Raphael writes editorials on European politics and economics for Bloomberg Opinion. She was editorial page editor of the Wall Street Journal Europe