This article in The Guardian (HERE) may mark the moment when the cold light of reality finally dawned in No 10 Downing Street or at least began to spread from No 11. It looks as if The Treasury has persuaded some ministers that having your cake and eating it is not a policy option, in so far that it ever was. It talks of officials "increasingly accepting the inevitability of a painful trade-off between market access and political control when the UK leaves the EU".
We are reaching a fork in the road where we will have to decide what it is we want because we cannot have both. Leaving the EU's single market and customs union will make us poorer and less influential. On the other hand it may give the appearance of greater control and sovereignty. The government is going to have to make that decision, however unpalatable it might be. The decision itself may not be all that difficult although amazingly there will be ministers on both sides. Some will actually be happy to see us impoverished to achieve some notional degree of extra sovereignty but the difficulty will be in explaining the consequences to those who voted to leave the EU.
When they do, it will be sugar coated you can be sure but newspapers on both sides of the Brexit argument will be incensed. There will be another sea change in public opinion as the electorate realise they have been sold a pup.
