What has Michael Gove agreed – and does it take us closer to an EU trade deal?

MPs went through one of the more peculiar of their traditional procedures last night, as they voted to reverse many of the amendments that the House of Lords had made to the UK Internal Market Bill. The number of each amendment that the government wanted to undo was read out by Nigel Evans, the deputy speaker, and a voice vote taken on each one. “I think the Ayes have it, the Ayes have it,” said Evans.

The opposition chose to put up a token resistance on four of the amendments, shouting “No” and forcing divisions. These were amendments to the controversial clauses in which Boris Johnson proposed to take the power to override parts of the Brexit withdrawal agreement – in other words to break international law. The government won each of those votes by majorities of at least 89, so the bill was sent back to the Lords with the original wording put back in.  

But then this morning the government announced that it will withdraw the controversial clauses anyway, having reached an agreement in principle on the Irish border provisions of the withdrawal agreement. Last night’s performance now looks even more like an elaborate pantomime put on purely for show.  

The agreement reached between Michael Gove and Maros Sefcovic, the co-chairs of the joint committee overseeing the implementation of the withdrawal agreement, could be significant.  

This is a parallel negotiation going on at the same time as the talks on a trade deal, so it doesn’t directly affect the chances of a trade deal, but it is obviously intended to give those negotiations a push. “I hope this will create positive momentum for the discussions on the free trade agreement,” said Sefcovic.  

It is important that Gove is the minister leading for the British side. As he was in effect the deputy leader of the Leave campaign in the 2016 referendum, Conservative MPs trust him. So when he says that he has secured his objectives, they are inclined to believe him – even though the details of his agreement with Sefcovic have not been published. This morning’s statement refers to “draft texts” that have been agreed, but it is not clear when we are going to see them – we are merely promised “further detail” alongside Gove’s statement to parliament tomorrow.  

We know what Gove and Johnson wanted to get rid of from the withdrawal agreement: they did not want the EU to decide which goods going from the rest of the UK to Northern Ireland would be “at risk” of going on to the Republic of Ireland; and nor did they want “export summary declarations” on goods going the other way – the bits of paper that Johnson told Northern Ireland business people during the election campaign to put “in the bin”. It will be interesting to see what Gove has to say about those tomorrow.  

Meanwhile, there is still the big question of the trade deal. Sefcovic commented this morning: “We are still far apart and we are not hiding this from anyone. We’ve removed one big obstacle, I hope we’ll see positive results coming from this.”  

That depends, in the end, on the state of relations between the key players: Johnson, Ursula von der Leyen, Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron. One of the more revealing details of Johnson’s phone conversation with von der Leyen yesterday is that he asked her at one point if Merkel and Macron could join their call, but she said no. You can just imagine him – “Let’s get them on, come on, we can sort this out with them now.”  

He understands that if he is to get more movement out of the EU side he has to break through the wall of EU solidarity and make direct appeals to the leaders of the most powerful EU countries, but the EU side is not going to fall for that one.  

In the end, the British side will have to make more concessions but because the main negotiation is being conducted by Johnson, the leader of the Leave campaign, and the side deal by Gove, the deputy leader, they will be able to sell quite big concessions as a triumph of national independence to the Tory MPs who took part in last night’s panto.