Tory eurosceptics are threatening to cause the first government defeat on a Queen’s Speech since 1924 by joining forces with Labour MPs over an amendment expressing regret that there is no bill exempting the NHS from the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. It’s the second time the eurosceptics have worked with Opposition MPs to try to force an embarrassing and historic defeat on a major government event: the last one was on the Tampon Tax after the March Budget (which turned out to be the least embarrassing bit of the aftermath of that Budget, as it happens).
But why are Tory eurosceptics joining in with this opposition game-playing? They had been reluctant until recently to do so, but feel that the Number 10 scare tactics in the referendum campaign, and what they feel is a briefing campaign against Michael Gove in particular (though today’s papers report suspicions that the Justice Secretary is not an entirely innocent victim) have pushed them into guerrilla tactics.
They are also aware that Number 10 will struggle to manage this particular amendment, as its line has always been that the NHS is explicitly exempt from TTIP. Ministers and spokespeople always point to this 2015 letter from EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström to Lord Livingston about TTIP in which she writes that ‘there is no reason to fear either for the NHS as it stands today or for changes to the NHS in future, as a result of TTIP or indeed EU trade policy more broadly’. So to concede in some way will be to undermine that line that they’ve stuck to for over a year. But the eurosceptics are not in a particularly conciliatory mood, so the government is going to have to offer some kind of an olive branch. Both sides think the other has started this stand-off – but if the Tory leadership isn’t going to experience warfare of an even more intense nature after the referendum, it needs to focus more on how on earth to finish it.
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