The UK will not be in control of its own destiny under the Chequers agreement

On 3rd August, the Prime Minister wrote a letter to all members of the Conservative Party defending the Government’s White Paper aka "Chequers".   Almost everyone, from all parties it would seem, is agreed the letter fails to address several key points and shows that the Government’s plan does not implement the will of the British people.   

So lets take one point.  Why will the UK not be back in control?    

Well,simply, the White Paper does not ‘respect the result of the referendum’ and does not give us control of our borders, laws and money. Ultimately everything depends on our democratic self-government. This means making all our laws, political and economic, in our sovereign parliament and adjudicating and interpreting them in our courts – as the Prime Minister proposed in her Lancaster House speech of January 2017. Tragically, this is not where we are now.   

This deal would prevent taking back control of our borders. Instead, free movement will be replaced by ‘reciprocal mobility arrangements… with other defined provisions’ and ‘the principle of non-discrimination between existing Member States’. This is dangerously close to free movement in new words. Non-discrimination may also allow migrants to claim benefits for their families at UK rates.   

When the Prime Minister writes that ‘EU citizens will no longer have the unfettered ability to come to the UK to seek work’ [our italics], this means they will generally still be able to come to the UK to seek work.   

The deal would prevent control over laws, because it will mean a ‘common rulebook’ for goods, with ‘consequences’ if we diverge. It includes threats of ‘action’ that may result if we do anything to gain an ‘undue competitive advantage’ – in other words what any normal independent nation should be able to do.     

This rulebook means being under all EU laws for goods. But in reality, it means rules for much more, because these rules will cover areas like competition too. It will be decided by majority vote of the other 27 Member States, behind closed doors and with no written record. The UK will not be at the table. The Prime Minister promises a ‘parliamentary lock’ so that our parliament can veto rule changes. But in practise this will be impossible. Norway received a similar promise but cannot diverge from the EU due to threats of consequences.    

And on money?  The Prime Minister writes there will be ‘no more vast annual sums paid to the EU’. But there will still be very considerable annual sums.     

The ‘Brexit bill’ alone would be around £35 billion (four years’ worth of net budget contributions). But this depends on the EU agreeing a deal: so that means being made to pay for a bad deal.      

Afterwards, the deal would prevent control over money because it commits us to continuing annual contributions to things like EU aid, and contributing to defence funding and coordination, which even Jean-Claude Juncker admits are intended to create an EU ‘common army’. 

This is what the Prime Minister means by ‘we will continue to cooperate on security matters’ in her letter. This is an attempt to mollify the EU.