Sunday with Niall Paterson Interview with Barry Gardiner Shadow International Trade Secretary

ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO SUNDAY WITH NIALL PATERSON, SKY NEWS

NIALL PATERSON: With Brexit talks on the buffers and the Conservative party at war with itself, the Labour party has been talking up being the government in waiting and should that come to pass, David Davies and Liam Fox could soon be replaced by Kier Starmer and one Barry Gardiner, and he’s here with me now, a very good morning to you. What in your mind, if anything, is going wrong with the Brexit negotiations at the moment?

BARRY GARDINER: It went wrong right at the beginning because the government failed to set the right tone for these negotiations. I think what we’re seeing now is the incapacity of our Cabinet to decide amongst themselves whether those who have always actually thought that Plan B ought to be Plan A, a deregulated future for this country, are now struggling deeply with those who think we need to manage leaving the European Union in a way that does not damage our economy beyond repair.

NP: Certainly, despite their claims to the contrary, claims of unity, it is pretty clear that there isn’t a settled view on Brexit around the Cabinet table but would you also accept that there is at least a degree of confusion on the part of the public as to exactly what Labour’s position is on Brexit. Kier Starmer said we need to do more communicating our message, would you agree with that?

BARRY GARDINER: I am always keen to communicate our message but I think what we’ve been clear about is that we need a transition period, that that transition period should be for the status quo as it is now in terms of our relationships with the European Union, that that should not change during the transition. We said that and eventually the government have come round to our position on this. Having said that, there are those in the Cabinet who are kicking and screaming about it and that’s the problem here, they are more focused on their internal arguments than they are on the real negotiations and discussion that we have to have with the European Union.

NP: But there is clearly intransigence on the part of Michel Barnier and others to a degree. Philip Hammond may have misspoke when he called them the enemy but they certainly wouldn’t mind being characterised as that given the way they behave, so all of that begs the question what would you do differently? What would you offer to the European Union in this negotiating process that is not being offered by the government?

BARRY GARDINER: Well the first thing that we offered actually before it all started, we said the very first thing that we would do is we would guarantee the existing rights of the three million European citizens who live in this country and we would look to the European Union for a reciprocal gesture for the 1.2 million of our citizens who live in the EU.

NP: But that deals with EU nationals living in the UK but there is a huge amount more to talk about …

BARRY GARDINER: Niall, you asked me what we would do differently and I said that’s the first thing that we would do differently and the reason for that is that it sets a tone of mutual trust and that’s what the government has failed to do here. Now there are many other things that we would be negotiating obviously, for a start we would not want to be coming out of organisations like Euratom, like the European Medicine Agency. We think the way in which the government has approached all of this, to say we have to come out of all these other organisations, is absolutely fundamentally flawed and it is creating real problems for the future way in which we do business. Next week in the House of Commons we will have a nuclear Bill coming in to the Commons simply to deal with the fact that the government no longer wishes to be part of Euratom, this is a nonsense.

NP: Okay, let’s move on to something else which you could give up, how important is it to free ourselves from the legal rulings of the ECJ? Is that a red line?

BARRY GARDINER: Look, can I just point out that in any treaty, in any negotiation that you have where you have an international treaty at the end of it, there always has to be a body that determines whether you have kept to your part of the …

NP: But there is a difference, as the government has outlined, between paying heat to the decisions of the ECJ and being bound by them isn’t there?

BARRY GARDINER: Of course but there always has to be a binding way of reconciling your differences. Now you can have a separate body and …

NP: But the ECJ is rather more than an administrative tribunal body, it is a legal authority superior to the Supreme Court.

BARRY GARDINER: It guarantees, it guarantees rights that this country keeps in its own constitution and in Europe is guaranteed there also so actually to have a body that says well this government has said that it wants to bring across all the rights that we currently possess in Europe into UK law and to have a body that says here we are going to guarantee that those rights are properly delivered to people, in any trade agreement you always have somebody who is going to be supervising and when somebody has a grievance they take it to that body. Now we can set up a separate procedure with UK judges and EU judges to …

NP: So the position that you are outlining at the moment appears to chime with that set forward by Kier Starmer which said pretty much everything is on the table, we just want to ensure the best trade access but I have to say though, given the way in which the talks are going at the moment, a no deal Brexit is becoming increasingly likely. What is your view of that?

BARRY GARDINER: It’s a disaster. A no deal Brexit is a disaster for this country, it’s a disaster because there would be no clarity for UK citizens living in Europe or for EU citizens living here. It’s a disaster because we would fall back onto the tariffs and quotas under the WTO that would impede trade in this country. It’s a disaster because we would have absolutely no certainty for business about the future of the …

NP: Sure, sure, the Shadow Chancellor this morning said that he believes that the House of Commons would not permit a no deal Brexit.

BARRY GARDINER: Well I hope that that is true but the point is this, we should not, absolutely not, have a Cabinet that is focused on no deal, even preparing for no deal, we should have a Cabinet that is focused on the deal.

NP: But there is a huge logical inconsistency in that position and it is fairly straightforward, that if the Commons unites to ensure that a no deal Brexit just isn’t a possibility, that they would stop it – we have essentially been bound to what the European Union sees as the settlement at the end of the negotiating process. If we can’t walk away they just dictate to us.

BARRY GARDINER: Look, it’s not a question of that.

NP: The negotiating process in which it is pretty clear the EU wants to go some distance in giving us a bit of a bloody nose.

BARRY GARDINER: Let me explain to you the process because the government talks of no deal as if it is a trump card that they throw on the table that says you’re not giving us a good enough deal so we will walk away. Actually it’s not a trump card that you throw on the table, it’s part of the Article 50 process. The Article 50 process says that you have got two years in which to negotiate, if you have not negotiated by the end of the two years a deal about your future relationship, then actually you are pushed off the edge of a cliff into a no deal, which is the WTO terms. Now what we are saying that’s just what happens, it’s not a card to be played.

NP: You say you’d be better at negotiating with the European Union than the government and frankly I could say that.

BARRY GARDINER: Well you could.

NP: And there would be a degree of truth in it, I think is what I take from that. But let’s return to this no deal point because I think it is really important. Just explain to me why, very, very briefly why the Commons voting against a no-deal Brexit benefits us, given the intransigence of the European Union?

BARRY GARDINER: Because no deal is not in our interests and it is not in the European Union’s interests. If the government tries to walk away into a no deal then what we need to do is say no, that should not happen, what we need to do is to extend the period of negotiation. That can be done under the Article 50 process …

NP: Only if the European Union agrees.

BARRY GARDINER: Yes, and they would agree to extend the negotiating period because all of us know that there has to be a future relationship and that has to be structured around a deal.

NP: Mr Gardiner, I admire your confidence but thank you very much for being with us this Sunday morning, I appreciate it.

BARRY GARDINER: A great pleasure.