Well, after a hard day at Chequers the cabinet finally agreed a common position that the EU can now formally reject. The official statement is HERE and the BBC's take is HERE. The basis of it is being rather grandly described as a UK-EU free trade area - but for some goods only. We will agree a common rule book, otherwise known as regulatory alignment overseen by treaty and a separate court, which will follow ECJ judgements but be independent. Oh and of course, the old customs partnership that the EU have already rejected. It all seems like a phenomenally complicated system to give us something that looks like a cherry picked partial membership version of the EU while carefully steering around some completely artificial red lines that Theresa May created all by herself.
Freedom of movement will be replaced by a "mobility framework" whatever that is. In fact the whole document might have been written by Lewis Carroll where words are used to give apparently new meanings to familiar things in the hope that nobody notices they are in reality still the same old things.
The EU will take a few days, perhaps a bit longer, before declaring it unacceptable. A longish delay would keep us waiting and get us closer to the cliff edge, close enough to peer over and see the rocks below. I'm sure this would concentrate minds wonderfully.
In fact some anonymous EU diplomat (HERE) has already declared it "dead on arrival". David Davis has declared it unworkable but the government statement seems to indicate he and all the other Brexiteers in the cabinet are signed up to it! It's amazing how attractive a ministerial job looks when the possibility of resigning comes up. No doubt we will see the reaction from the pro Brexit press as the days go by.
On goods, the statement says:
The UK and the EU would maintain a common rulebook for all goods including agri-food, with the UK making an upfront choice to commit by treaty to ongoing harmonisation with EU rules on goods, covering only those necessary to provide for frictionless trade at the border. These rules are relatively stable, and supported by a large share of our manufacturing businesses. The UK would of course continue to play a strong role in shaping the international standards that underpin them, and Parliament would have oversight of the incorporation of these rules into the UK’s legal order – with the ability to choose not to do so, recognising that this would have consequences.
There is a lot in this one paragraph. We are only committing to a common rule book for stuff that helps frictionless trade at the border, not all goods. I'm not sure what this covers. We want to play a strong role in shaping the international standards - which implies we want to have equal weight with the EU in this regard - a total pipe dream. Finally, we want to have the "ability" not to incorporate some future rules into UK law. Businesses would then be operating in a state of permanent uncertainty about exactly when parliament might decide to object and the UK-EU free trade area come to a sudden end. None of it makes sense to me and provides an environment far less business friendly then we have now.
But the cries of betrayal are already beginning (HERE) with John Longworth leading the charge that the government is preventing the hard Brexit and the industrial suicide he has craved for years. Ian Dale says Britons, although I think he means leave voters, will "never vote again" (HERE) - well, every cloud has a silver lining, eh?
For people like Longworth, the betrayal has only just begun. When the EU reject the third way, what is May going to do? It's obvious she understands the damage an ordinary free trade deal would cause the UK economy, which is why she is demanding such a soft Brexit. To then imagine she will go from the softest of soft Brexits to no deal at all you would have to believe in fairies riding unicorns.
No, having pointed in the direction she wants to go the EU will then help to take her all the way - to Norway and the EEA.
Theresa May's problem is writ large in this poll (HERE) that suggests that party will lose the next election if she goes for a soft Brexit. But if she goes for a hard Brexit she will also surely lose the next election. The Tories are in a lose-lose situation or tethered to the mast of Brexit. They have taken thirty years to drive themselves into the EU cul-de-sac from which there is no way out. All they can do is cover up and wait for the blows to rain down on them. They have visited a disaster on the country and deserve everything they get.
Although there were no resignations yesterday, look out for some in the next week or so. Mrs May has restored the rule about cabinet collective responsibility so some ministers (BoJo, Fox, etc) will find themselves asked to stoutly defend things they profoundly disagree with and have relentlessly attacked in the past. Some might manage it, others won't I'm sure.
The weirdest thing for me is that before the referendum about half the people were unhappy with our relationship with the EU - hence the result. If this proposal, or anything like it, is implemented we will find all of the people will be unhappy with the relationship, a sort of equally shared unhappiness, albeit for different reasons.
