In 1986, ahead of one of those perpetual reboots that dog the superhero world, DC Comics published ‘Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?’. Penned by Alan Moore (of Watchmen fame) it imagined a world ten years after Superman’s disappearance, as a farewell tribute to that famous illegal immigrant from Krypton.
Alas, I long ago gave up my aspiration of writing comic books to dabble in the more infantile world of politics instead, and so my memory of the plot isn’t what it was. But the title, at least, has weighed on my mind since yesterday’s vote on the Stormont Brake. Readers – whatever happened to the European Research Group? Or the Spartans, as their self-mythology puts it, and which has now became an interchangeable term for its most ardent members.
Rishi Sunak won his vote by 515 votes to 29. Despite suggestions the night before that the rebellion could reach into the 30s or 40s, the actual number of Tory MPs who voted against the Windsor Framework was only 22. That was despite Mark Francois, the ERG’s chair, strongly advocating – including on ConHome – that Eurosceptic MPs should reject the deal.
The rebellion included three Tory ex-leaders – Iain Duncan Smith, Boris Johnson, and Liz Truss – and a plethora of former Cabinet ministers, like Priti Patel and Simon Clarke. There were also Johnson loyalists – such as Jonathan Gullis – serial rebels – like Christopher Chope – and those Spartans GXL who neither ever voted for Theresa May’s deal nor now for Sunak’s, such as Andrea Jenkyns.
The ERG has argued one should also include the 47 Conservative abstentions – because of whom, the group suggests, the Prime Minister would have had to rely on opposition votes. But this maths is a little fishy. Not only does it rely upon every opposition MP voting against it, but it also assumes all abstentions are the equivalent of a No vote.
One could speculate that the sympathies of abstainers such as Nadine Dorries, Nigel Adams, and Conor Burns might lean towards the Johnson way of thinking. But Grant Shapps and Mims Davies – both ministers? Or David Mundell and Maria Miller – those notorious Eurosceptics? The more one considers it, the more one things that Francois and co are grasping at straws. And that, to mix a few metaphors, the Spartans have faced their Waterloo.
How did it come to this? Once, the ERG was the group upon whom the lobby waited with baited breath for any white smoke, and who, just a few short months ago, Sunak paid homage to out of a fear they would jump behind Penny Mordaunt. Yet now it seems he need not have bothered – their bite is not equal to their bark.
The central fact is this: Brexit has been done. The group is a victim of its own success. By holding out, getting changes to the Withdrawal Agreement, and then achieving their ultimate end goal, they are confronted by the problems of the peace. They could agree that they wanted to be out of the European Union, and that May’s route was not the one they wanted. But what next?
Brexiteers no longer have the fear that if they do not hang together, Brexit will not happen. The ERG’s discipline first fractured when several key members or allies – such as Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg – broke ranks and voted for May’s deal, leaving the 28 so-called Spartans to resist it to the last. That it did not pass, of course, relied upon their other great ally – Jeremy Corbyn. And one notes that the 300 at Thermopylae were ultimately overwhelmed.
Former chairs like Suella Braverman, Chris Heaton-Harris, and Steve Baker are now in government, robbing today’s ERG of the (always debatable) status of their being the arbiters of Eurosceptic opinion. The division now – as with that last vote on May’s deal – is between those facing the practicalities of Brexit, and those who want the perfect to be the enemy of the better
As I have mentioned before, the thinking behind the Windsor Framework is not that it is the last step in Brexit negotiations. It is a springboard from which the Northern Ireland Protocol can be chipped away, one agreement at a time. Opponents of the Framework aren’t interested in that gradualism. They want it all and they want it now, à la Freddie Mercury.
But this was always the problem with the argument that the Spartans were key to delivering Brexit. Yes, they held out against May’s deal prevented it from being implemented. But their agenda was entirely negative. Without the Vote Leave posse, the re-opening of the Withdrawal Agreement and 2019 election campaign that really ‘Got Brexit Done’ would have been impossible.
Euroscepticism’s central question is no longer ‘how do we get out?’ but ‘what do we do now we are?’ Yesterday’s vote exposed two different answers to that: to remain crouched in habitual opposition, or to work from where we find ourselves. That so few followed those big names yesterday shows the side on which most Brexiteer MPs are falling.
Once the sea of faith we placed in the ERG was full. But now we only hear its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar.