Could Labour negotiate a different Brexit deal?

Labour’s Brexit policy, clarified by Jeremy Corbyn this week, is to negotiate a softer exit, and then to put it to a referendum with the option to Remain.

One question that pops up a lot is whether a Labour government could actually negotiate a different Brexit deal. Haven’t we heard that this is “the only deal on the table”?

The EU side has long said that it will not renegotiate the withdrawal agreement – though it has recently shown some flexibility on looking at alternatives to the backstop.

But even assuming the withdrawal agreement could not be renegotiated, there are other parts of the Brexit deal that could be changed. The withdrawal agreement being “the only deal available” should not be confused with a soft Brexit being off the table.

The withdrawal agreement is accompanied by the “political declaration on the future relationship” – which spells out the relationship between the UK and the EU after Brexit happens.

This agreement specifies things like whether the UK will be in a customs union, whether it will follow single market rules, and other things like this. It’s not a worked out legal treaty text, but it is composed of principles agreed by both sides.

Labour wants a customs union and alignment with the single market; the European Commission has repeatedly said that both these options are on the table. Chief negotiator Michel Barnier himself has even said the political declaration could be rewritten to include them in a matter of days. That is one benefit of the political declaration not being a complicated legal text – it’s easy to change.

Mr Barnier even restated this this week. He told the European parliament on Wednesday: “The door is open to a higher ambition if there is a shared desire in that area. Obviously we want to be as ambitious as possible in rebuilding our economic relationship with the UK.”

One additional point to make is that changing the political declaration to enact a soft Brexit also solves the Northern Ireland border problem which has dogged talks for the last couple of years.

This is because the border problem only appears in a hard Brexit, where there are checks on goods between the UK and EU markets. Membership of a customs union and the EU single market would render this situation and the backstop furore more-or-less irrelevant.

The EU in fact pushed this approach to solving the Northern Ireland issue at the beginning of the year when Theresa May was still prime minister, but was basically ignored. The government did not want to go for a soft Brexit.

There would not even need to be a “negotiation” as such to achieve this softening. The UK would more or less be simply adopting an option that the EU has presented as available since the beginning. No leverage or brinkmanship required.

But above all, the crucial point is that the withdrawal agreement being “the only deal on the table” doesn’t mean the UK can’t have a soft Brexit, or change the future relationship spelled out in the deal. The shouts are “unicorn!” have been misplaced.