Theresa May’s deal isn’t ‘Brexit in name only’ – it’s the best way to leave the EU

Referendums pose a challenge to representative democracies – namely, how does a simple yes-or-no question, like whether to remain in the EU, survive contact with the reality of negotiation, legislation and practical implementation?

It is more challenging still when the result was as narrow as the Brexit vote.

The answer to reconciling this web of contradictions is the Brexit deal that we now have before us.

As someone in business who voted for Brexit, I believe Theresa May’s deal to be an acceptable result, born of trying to take a general mandate through these complexities.

It does deliver Brexit: the UK will no longer be a member of the EU.

Nor can it be said to be “Brexit in name only”, as some critics claim. We will get control of both our borders and our laws, and will stop paying anything like the same sums into the EU budget.

So why does this deal seem to attract so little support among parliamentarians?

For those Remainers who say that this is just a worse version of the status quo, I would simply remind them that the status quo is not available. The British people voted to leave, and leave we must.

The worst thing the UK could do is reject the referendum result and force people to vote again. Have MPs forgotten the trauma we went through as a country in 2016?

It is exactly this patronising philosophy that voters don’t know what is best for them which now sees the EU itself battling through a crisis of democracy and legitimacy – we will surely see the consequences of this attitude in the 2019 European elections.

For those who argue that May’s deal fails to realise the full potential and opportunity of Brexit, I would say that, while this is true in the immediate term, the benefits will still come.

Hardline Leavers seem to advocate a sequencing of chaos and uncertainty followed by opportunity. This deal delivers certainty and stability followed by opportunity.

The future Brexit opportunity is still open for us to seize, but without this deal, manufacturers employing hundreds of thousands of people will take steps to move out of the UK. I know, because I have talked to them directly.

Sceptics will still say that this locks us into an EU-like agreement forever, but it quite clearly does not. It is in neither side’s interest that the withdrawal agreement becomes a permanent arrangement.

That is why the much-quoted phrase that the EU and the UK have a binding obligation to use their “best endeavours” to agree a future arrangement that supersedes the backstop should find favour with both cynics and the faithful.

Far from the worst of both worlds, I would argue the opposite. This deal provides for stability and certainty now (the stock economic arguments of the Remainers), and the credible promise of Brexit dividends on trade still to come (the stock arguments of Leavers).

Translating plebiscites into practical policy is always a matter of compromise, and that is what this deal is. And that is why I will be voting for it in the House of Lords.