After the crushing majority won by Rishi Sunak for the ‘Stormont brake’ element of his new deal on the terms of trade in Northern Ireland, a single question is on the lips of many MPs: whither the ERG?
For the once-mighty European Research Group – the Tory party’s formidably well organised Praetorian Guard which shielded the Brexit flame from Remain – was able to field fewer than two dozen votes against this key element of the Windsor Framework this week.
At one crucial juncture back in 2019, a mere sub-element of the European Research Group, the ‘Brexit Spartans’, played a decisive role in killing off Theresa May’s terrible proposed sovereignty giveaway. And there were 28 of them.
But once you strip the DUP’s votes out of the 29 registered against Sunak this week, you are left with just 22 names. At its height the ERG could put a solid block of 100 MPs through the division lobby of its choosing, marshalled by its then formidable leader Steve Baker.
But Baker, now a Northern Ireland minister, is out and proud as an enthusiast for Sunak’s fudge. His claim this week that Boris Johnson would turn himself into a ‘pound shop Nigel Farage’ were he to vote against the government, which he did, was worthy of a melodramatic ‘Ooh, you’ve changed’ response.
Given that it coincided with him being excluded from the main ERG WhatsApp Group, this is in effect how his comment was received. The current ERG chairman, Baker’s former lieutenant Mark Francois, was left to lead the rhetorical charge against the measure but seemed bereft. Muttley without Dick Dastardly by his side. Later in the week the feuding turned to farce as Baker used his forgotten status as WhatsApp group admin to remove remaining ERG members, one by one.
Farage himself was clear that those MPs who did hold the purity line – by voting against a policy that seems to him to institutionalise a bias against UK-wide regulatory divergence from the EU –had taken part in a show of weakness rather than a show of strength.
‘The Commons vote was the last throw of the dice for Euroscepticism in the Tory party. The rebels were around the same in number that voted against Maastricht 30 years ago. They were always a surrender party,’ Farage tweeted, expertly pushing the buttons of devout Brexiteers.
The original ERG goes all the way back to those Maastricht days, having been set up by the influential Michael Spicer to come up with ideas and arguments to thwart Britain’s participation in the project for European integration.
Baker relaunched it in 2016, shortly after the referendum result, as a much more aggressive and focused force, ultimately leading to it attracting that old charge of being ‘a party within a party’. It certainly had a whipping operation which could put Mrs May’s to shame.
In its reduced current form it is probably best regarded as a faction within a faction. The damning verdict reached by its ‘Star Chamber’ on the overall Windsor Framework proved unable to hold sway over its own membership, with many ERGers deciding to take the milksop option of abstaining yesterday rather than voting against the government, while more than a handful threw their lot in with Sunak’s plan.
Conservative MPs overall appear to have come to the view that they have delighted the British public long enough with feuds over the fine-tuning of life outside the EU and need to focus now on other priorities. From this standpoint, Sunak is seen as having brought RA Butler’s ‘art of the possible’ to bear and put together something workable as regards post-Brexit arrangements for Northern Ireland.
From the perspective of the Great British public that is probably a correct judgment. But it neglects the real Spartans, the DUP, whose assembly members show no sign of allowing power-sharing institutions to resume, which was after all the main objective of the deal.
Perhaps the ERG will muster some final roar and claw over how zealously the government conducts its mission to repeal thousands of EU laws that still linger on the Statute Book. But the pragmatic leaders of both main parties, who clearly just want to move on, will not allow it to be the terror of the division lobbies again. A colourful and sometimes glorious chapter is coming to a close.
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