Brexit

How much will Theresa May’s speech today surprise us? The Prime Minister’s promise to offer more detail on Brexit was made before Christmas, but Number 10 types seemed curiously relaxed about the prep for the speech over the holiday. And even though those briefing the speech over the weekend warned of a ‘market correction’, this is likely to have been as much to suggest that the speech was going to be big and revelatory as it was to actually warn about its content. Today we will get the 12 priorities for May’s negotiation of Britain’s exit, which will be guided by four key principles. Those are ‘certainty and clarity’, ‘a stronger Britain’, ‘a fairer Britain’ and a ‘truly global Britain’.

The British people, whose good nature is so frequently abused, could have done with hearing today’s argument from Daniel Hannan during the referendum campaign, could they not?  Before he and his band of zealots received authorisation to manage our economic and political future it would have been good manners if they had told us how far they wanted to go. All the way, seems to be the answer now.  In the bluff language of a drunk roaring on friends in a barroom brawl, Hannan tells us on the Spectator website not to be ‘wusses’. So what if, and contrary to what they told us last year, Brexit now means crashing out of the single market and customs union. Why are you frightened of that, you wusses, you wimps, you bedwetting liberal pussies?

The trouble with plebiscites is that they leave the plebs stranded. A complicated issue is reduced to one question: should we leave the EU, yes or no. Nowhere on the ballot does it ask whether we should leave the single market or currency union, crash into the WTO without trade agreements with the rest of the world, or tear up employment protections. There is just the deceptively simple question. It provides no guidance to which of the thousands of possible futures we could chose when it is answered. The Leavers might have interpreted the referendum result as meaning Britain should embrace the Norway model; and pay the price for staying in the single market by accepting free movement.

Boris Johnson returned from the US this week boasting that the UK was now ‘first in line’ for a trade deal with the US. He said that the Trump team and the new Congress ‘want to do it fast’. But as I write in The Sun this morning, the situation is even more advanced than this. I understand that the Trump team is already working on the outlines of a US / UK trade deal. Interestingly, they want the deal to be pencilled in before the UK leaves the EU, though the UK could not formally sign it until it has left the bloc. The US’s keenness for a trade deal with the UK strengthens the case for the UK leaving the customs union. Inside the customs union, Britain is not able to do its own comprehensive trade deals.

The Guardian has a very significant story on its front page tomorrow. It has obtained notes of a meeting that Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator, had with senior MEPs this week. These notes show that Barnier told them that he wanted a ‘special’ deal that would guarantee access for the EU firms and countries to the City of London’s financial markets. Interestingly, Barnier also said—according to The Guardian’s account—that ‘There will need to be work outside of the negotiation box … in order to avoid financial instability.” This suggests that Barnier shares Mark Carney’s view that there are financial stability risks for Europe if the EU cuts itself off from the City of London.