The Guardian view on the European Research Group: not serious, still dangerous

The Emperor’s New Clothes is usually cited as a parable of pricked vanity, but Hans Christian Andersen’s story has a subtle twist. Even after the child has declared that there are no magic clothes and the townsfolk have taken up his cry, the naked, shivering emperor does not turn back. He suspects the jeering crowd is right but he feels the procession must go on. He walks “more proudly than ever”.

This is the stage we have reached with the hard Brexit faction in the Conservative party. This week MPs allied to the European Research Group (ERG), chaired by Jacob Rees-Mogg, have been parading around Westminster in what they imagine to be intellectual finery. On Wednesday they wore solutions to the Irish border problem. On Monday, they sported confidence that within 15 years of crashing out of the EU without a deal, the UK would be a trillion pounds better off than if it had stayed in the club.

That claim, disputed by the overwhelming majority of economists, was taken from a report by Economists For Free Trade, a pro-Brexit pressure group. The report advertises something called a “World Trade Deal”, a fine-sounding fabric with a flaw – it doesn’t exist. It is an attempt to rebrand the notion of falling back on World Trade Organization rules. That mechanism could not prevent massive disruption to supply chains, bottlenecks at British borders, and relocation of businesses to territories inside the EU’s single market.

The ERG Tories respond to those hazards by denying that they exist and with false assertions about WTO rules. They say, for example, that it would be illegal for the EU to impose checks or raise non-tariff barriers on UK goods. On the contrary, the EU would be obliged to treat the UK as it would any “third country”. Either cynically or stupidly, hard Brexiters ignore the unique nature of the single market. They pretend that differences between British and EU standards post-Brexit would be of no consequence. It is on this basis that the ERG dismisses the need for substantial change on the Irish border. Wednesday’s report glibly declares: “Since UK and EU standards are identical and will remain identical at the point of departure, determining equivalence after Brexit should be straightforward.”

It is not straightforward. It is, in fact, one of the hardest legal questions in the whole business of disentangling the UK economy from its largest trading partner. Brussels cannot gift the UK member-level access to the single market on a vague promise that its standards might be equivalent for a while. Either there is conformity to the rules or there is not. And the whole point of Brexit, as sold by many Tories, is that divergence can be quick and drastic. In that case there needs to be a mechanism for checking, and checks happen at borders.

Mr Rees-Mogg and friends style themselves as a “research group”. They have had ample time to research Brexit proposals to rival the prime minister’s approach. Yet with only a few months to spare, their prospectus is embarrassing – or at least it should be. They are indulged by Downing Street because Theresa May does not want to provoke a challenge to her position. That tolerance gives credibility to views that do not deserve to be taken seriously. There is not much time left to negotiate a deal, so none should be wasted trying to placate people whose clear ambition is to bully the prime minister into a position where no deal is possible. Those Tories are entitled to continue in their proud procession of invisible plans, but they should not expect to be followed by anyone who understands the difficulty of Brexit and cares about a good outcome.