Brexit

‘Evolve’ is the new word of the Brexit negotiations. The draft Council negotiating guidelines presented by Donald Tusk yesterday, stressed that the EU's offer would change if the UK’s position evolved. Meeting Tusk today, the Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has made exactly the same point. The negotiating strategy is clear: keep telling the British that if they are prepared to change their position, then the EU will come back with a far more wide-ranging deal. As I say in my column in this week's magazine, the EU will continue to offer Theresa May a choice between—basically—Canada or Norway. They hope that if they can keep this up, the UK will eventually take the Norway option and agree to become a regulatory rule-taker across the economy as a whole.

Here we go. The European Commission draft guidelines for the Brexit trade negotiations have leaked – and, as expected, it doesn't make all that pretty reading for the British government. Although Theresa May's Brexit speech was well-received in the UK, in Brussels many of May's arguments and proposals appear to have fallen on deaf ears. Speaking today, Donald Tusk has warned that it is not his priority to make Brexit a success: 'I fully understand and respect Theresa May’s political objective to demonstrate at any price that Brexit could be a success and was the right choice. But sorry, it is not our objective.' The main takeaways from the text, obtained by Politico, are that there can be no 'partial participation' – aka cherry-picking – in the single market.

When Theresa May gave her big housing speech today, in front of a rather strange fake brick backdrop that made the Prime Minister appear to be emerging from a chimney, she was trying to speak to two audiences. The first was those who believe, as she says she does, that the housing crisis is one of the biggest barriers to social justice in this country. The second was those who may agree with the first sentiment in abstract, but who are very worried about inappropriate development and destruction of our green and pleasant land. It's a tricky game, playing good-cop, bad-cop all by yourself, but that's what the Prime Minister had to do in order to announce anything at all on housing.

It can be impossibly hard to concentrate on the intricacies of the Brexit negotiations. But over the past week, we have got a certain bracing clarity. There are two logical British positions. We mostly turn our backs on the EU way of doing things, and become a noticeably different country — less European, less regulated. That is where most Conservatives seem to be heading. Or we conclude that the economic risk is too big and stick close to the EU, ceding freedom to strike new trade deals in order to keep those nearer markets fully open. After his speech, that’s where Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour is going. What is being squeezed is the notion of a middle way — frictionless access to EU markets and maximum ability to diverge.

Theresa May's speech today won't have left any portion of her party ecstatic. As the Prime Minister promised 'ups and downs in the months ahead', she warned that 'no-one will get everything they want'. With compromises coming down the track, May made sure to dish today's disappointment out in an even-handed manner. For the Remain side of her party that meant their hopes for a customs union compromise – as Isabel reported earlier in the week – were dashed. She not only re-iterated her stated position that the UK would leave the customs union but said that the UK should be able to set its own tariffs. That suggests not even a partial customs union is possible. There was also strong wording that there would not be a 'soft' Brexit that accommodates the City.

When I mentioned on social media recently that I’d lost friends because of Brexit, I was quite surprised by the vehemence of the response. Lots of fellow Leavers had stories to tell about friends who now cut them dead or former clients who would no longer work with them. Many said they prefer to keep secret how they voted in the referendum for fear of the repercussions.This intolerance is especially bad if you’re a student. One undergraduate described to me how his politics professor had opened a lecture with a slide reading ‘Brexit is shit’ — apparently ‘to the cheers and adulation of the entire lecture theatre’.

With the Irish border problem rearing its head once again this week, Sir John Major has popped up with an intervention Theresa May could probably have done without. In a speech today, the former prime minister urged May to keep Britain in 'a' customs union for the sake of the peace process. He went on to say MPs should be given a free vote on whether to accept or reject the final Brexit deal and that this should include the option to decide on a second referendum. However, Mr S can't help but sense a whiff of major hypocrisy in the air. Firstly, Major did not practise what he is preaching when he was Prime Minister. During his premiership, MPs were not given a free vote on the Maastricht treaty – it was whipped.