Emily Thornberry is a British Labour MP and the shadow international trade secretary.
It’s not easy to rebel against your own party.
At the very least, you need a thick skin for the abuse you’ll get from the whips, as well as a cavalier approach to your own career prospects.
In the current climate, Conservative MPs have even more to fear, with so many in the past year having lost the whip and ultimately lost their seats for stepping out of line on the wrong issue.
To rebel in those circumstances requires MPs with guts and grit, but above all, a good measure of principle.
It is a tough pill for the government to ask its MPs to swallow.
The kind of individuals who, when whipped to vote against their convictions and the interests of their constituents, will ask themselves: “What am I in this for?” — especially when the damage cannot be undone.
Many of them will be asking that question Monday evening, when the government’s post-Brexit Trade Bill returns for its final stages in the House of Commons.
This is the legislation that — after four decades — enables us once again to manage our own trade policy and ratify our own independent trade agreements.
And yet, rather than restoring parliamentary sovereignty over this vital area, the draft bill deprives MPs of any say — let alone a final vote — on the content of future trade deals.
It is a tough pill for the government to ask its MPs to swallow.
Imagine waiting years to “take back control” from Brussels and fight the corner of your local industries, only to be told that trade deals that threaten their future could — under the government’s plans — be negotiated, agreed and ratified without a single House of Commons debate.
And that is not some invented concern, as the controversy over food and farming standards has shown.
The facts here are not in dispute.
Meat from the U.S. is produced with minimal regulation and at minimal cost, and if imported freely into Britain it would massively undercut goods produced to the high standards that our farmers are required to meet, ranging from the welfare of their animals to the recycling of their waste.
At present, that threat from U.S. agricultural products is controlled at the EU level through a combination of high import tariffs and a ban on certain products on food safety grounds.
The major U.S. agrifood corporations are desperate to use a trade deal with the U.K. to dismantle those barriers, and that is naturally the chief negotiating objective of the Trump administration.
The EU’s restrictions relate solely to food safety, not animal welfare or all the other standards our farmers must meet.
That is why MPs from all sides in the House of Commons have campaigned for amendments to the Trade Bill that would protect U.K. farmers against sub-standard imports, establish those protections as law, and put this issue beyond doubt.
The government accepts the objectives of that campaign but argues that it can be achieved simply by retaining the EU’s current import bans in their post-Brexit Withdrawal Act.
Unfortunately, that is just not the case.
The EU’s restrictions relate solely to food safety, not animal welfare or all the other standards our farmers must meet. For example, they would not stop the import of pork from U.S. farms using sow stalls, which have been banned in Britain for more than 20 years.
Only high tariffs stop those imports at present, and they will disappear under any U.K.-U.S. free-trade deal.
The danger is that whatever the commission proposes, it will come too late and carry too little weight to derail progress toward an agreement with Washington.
The government has tried to assuage fears on this issue by creating a Trade and Agriculture Commission, a group of farming industry representatives invited to make recommendations on the protection and promotion of British farming in future trade deals.
However, when asked what will happen if the commission’s recommendations are at odds with the proposed U.K.-U.S. trade deal, the government cannot — or will not — provide an answer.
The danger is that whatever the commission proposes, it will come too late and carry too little weight to derail progress toward an agreement with Washington.
And the question for every MP who cares about our farming communities is whether we are willing to take that risk.
After all, if we agree with International Trade Secretary Liz Truss’ stated objective in setting up the commission — namely “to ensure U.K. farmers do not face unfair competition and that their high animal welfare and production standards are not undermined” — should we leave that to a new body with no statutory powers, or should we take the responsibility ourselves?
If it is the latter, we have the opportunity to pass an amendment to the Trade Bill that says simply and clearly that agricultural products may not be imported into the U.K. under future trade deals unless they meet all the same standards that U.K. farmers are required to meet.
I do not believe it would be disloyal for Conservative MPs to vote for that amendment, or to vote for the accompanying amendment that seeks to allow proper parliamentary scrutiny of all future trade deals.
Doing so will simply be an act of service to the constituents who sent them to Westminster, to the future of the British farming industry, and to the rights of a parliament that has waited four decades to have a say on trade policy, and should not be cowed into silence now.