OF COURSE Theresa May and her minority government have made a dog’s breakfast of Brexit! What else could reasonably have been expected?

The Prime Minister, her Chancellor Philip Hammond and the majority of her original Cabinet were — and still are — in favour of Britain remaining in the European Union.

Like their predecessors David Cameron and George Osborne, they understand that the “free market” and monetarist treaties of the EU create the most lucrative framework for monopoly corporations in Britain and across Europe.

Big business “freedoms” to move goods, services, capital and labour — and therefore jobs — around an entire continent, protected by Fortress Europe tariffs where necessary, have been enshrined in basic EU law since the Treaty of Rome in 1957.
 
The 1992 Maastricht Treaty turned those paper freedoms into the reality of the EU single market and customs union. The EU Court of Justice ensures the compliance of elected regional and national governments and trades unions — hence the series of ECJ rulings that the TUC and Britain’s unions once denounced before the EU referendum.
 
The Amsterdam Treaty slipped a monetarist straitjacket on all EU member states, policed and enforced by the European Commission and the European Central Bank, which is constitutionally independent of any democratic control.

No wonder that much of British big business represented by the Confederation of British Industry, the Institute of Directors, the Engineering Employers Federation and the Bank of England bankrolled the Remain campaign.

Since their defeat in June 2016, the corporate fat cats have been pressing Theresa May’s government to do everything possible to deliver a so-called “soft” Brexit. This would tie Britain as closely as possible to the EU big business “freedoms” even after leaving the EU.

Regular readers of the Financial Times will be aware of the heavyweight attendance and pro-EU agenda of the Business Advisory Council established by May after the 2017 general election.

As many of these companies also bankroll the Tories, the Prime Minister has done her best to accommodate the interests of her party’s paymasters.

But she has also had to try to keep her Cabinet and parliamentary party united, lest the so-called “hard” Brexiteers rebel and Ukip is resurrected to regain several million votes from the Tories.

Thus, while pretending to deliver a real Brexit, the Prime Minister has been preparing a “soft” — and therefore in reality a bogus — Brexit.

She has already agreed to extend Britain’s EU membership for almost two years to the end of 2020 and pay a whopping £37 billion “divorce” bill — three times all the non-NHS cuts to 2020.
 
Now the White Paper of July 12 proposes an “association agreement” between Britain and the EU, in place of formal membership of the EU and its single market and customs union as such.

British industrial and agricultural goods would remain in a “free trade area” and therefore, in effect, stay subject to the EU single market regime. The White Paper acknowledges that this would continue the general ban on state aid to industry.

Control over fisheries would be repatriated to Britain, although FT journalists believe that widescale access to EU fleets will be traded away by new Brexit Secretary and ex-Leaver Dominic Raab in negotiations with failed right-wing French politician Michel Barnier.

The White Paper proposes that most trade in services should continue under various sets of arrangements, while financial services would flow freely between Britain and the EU on the basis of mutual recognition of “equivalent” standards.

Yet the EU has so far insisted that tariff-free access will only be available on an all-or-nothing basis, not sector by sector, let alone service by service. Certainly, the financiers of Paris and Frankfurt are not inclined to allow the largely unregulated City of London to continue enjoying the benefits of a non-level playing field.

Moreover, for EU representatives the free movement of capital and labour, as well as goods and services, must remain sacrosanct — they are, after all, commandments in the EU neoliberal bible (otherwise known as the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union).

The White Paper repeats the government’s determination not to have customs posts on the north-south Irish border. As the Smart Border 2.0 report of MEPs last November made clear, a frictionless border is perfectly possible, technologically.

But the EU is equally determined to keep Northern Ireland in the EU single market if it cannot be used as a lever to retain the whole of the UK.

Some commentators claim that PM May and Chancellor Hammond are only too aware that the White Paper will be savaged by Barnier and his real boss, EU Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker.

Either the Tory Cabinet will surrender and agree a bogus Brexit largely on EU terms or, the cynics claim, the intention is to return from Brussels without a deal and put the question of EU membership to a general election or a second referendum. Pro-EU “Project Fear” would go into overdrive.

That scenario might also explain last week’s sudden barrage of “no deal” propaganda from Dominic Raab and other government departments.

In either event, the Tory and big business pro-EU camp see little option but to rely on pro-EU Labour MPs to deliver a bogus Brexit if Brexit cannot be reversed altogether. Hence the extensive cross-party collaboration between pro-EU MPs and the upsurge in chatter about a “national government.”

The biggest fear of Tory and pro-EU Labour MPs is shared by the EU political, bureaucratic and business establishment, namely, the election of a left-led Labour government in Britain.

They view with horror the prospect of their neoliberal orthodoxy unravelling in a major European economy. Like many member-state governments including Britain, EU institutions have been promoting austerity, marketisation, privatisation, regressive taxation, labour flexibility and the “rights” of monopoly corporations.

Labour’s 2017 manifesto sought to travel in the opposite direction with higher public spending, investment in industry and infrastructure through state-backed bonds, limits on competitive tendering, selective public ownership, reform of VAT, enhanced rights at work and the regulation of capital, trade and labour — not least in order to end the super-exploitation of migrant workers.

No wonder the Times reported on May 7 that “Britain faces restrictions on post-Brexit trade and draconian measures to enforce free-market policies because the European Union fears a future Jeremy Corbyn government.”

The report continued: “Senior European officials have told The Times that concerns over Labour’s economic policies are the main reason for the EU’s insistence on a tough ‘level playing field mechanism’ in a future deal after Britain leaves.”

This should help clarify the debilitating confusion on the left and in the labour movement. Any “soft” Brexit is a trap to prevent a left-led Labour government pursuing policies that put the working class and the people before big business profiteering.

The only “People’s Vote” we need is a general election.

Robert Griffiths is general secretary of the Communist Party.