After his meetings with Theresa May, I gather, Barack Obama has expressed true astonishment to his aides over Brexit. “They’ve got no plan,” he has said. “They’ve just got no plan.” In the prime minister’s first six months, this private assessment has hardened into something close to a general orthodoxy: namely that May and her colleagues have established no clear strategy for Britain’s departure from the European Union. But what if the soon-to-be-ex-president is wrong?
To adapt Sherlock Holmes: we see but we do not observe. This prime minister is not a great exponent of euphemism, metaphor and rhetorical trope. Instinctively, she says what she means. The natural response of a political and media class raised on spin, dog-whistles and devious code is to look for hidden meaning or the absence of any meaning at all.
When May says that “Brexit means Brexit”, it feels like a dereliction of cryptographic duty to take her at face value. Yet her method is, and has always been, to disclose her intentions straightforwardly but according to her own timetable. As she reportedly says to allies: “I don’t care if people think I’m stupid for a bit.”
On Tuesday at Lancaster House she will deliver her long-awaited statement on the government’s plans – potentially the most significant speech on the EU by a prime minister since David Cameron unveiled his referendum blueprint in January 2013. In so doing, she will relax her own rule that there shall be “no running commentary” on Britain’s negotiating strategy. But this statement was the price exacted by the Commons in December for MPs’ commitment to “respect the wishes of the people” and trigger article 50 before the end of March – a price worth paying for such an undertaking.
Every word, every phrase, every inflexion will be analysed within an inch of its life. How could it be otherwise? The burden of expectation borne by this speech is crushing. It reflects months of work by the PM, her closest aides and cabinet colleagues, advised by senior officials such as Jeremy Heywood, the cabinet secretary, and Oliver Robbins, the permanent secretary for the Department for Exiting the European Union.
Yet, whatever the prime minister says, it is intrinsic to the exercise that she will disappoint as well as please. In too many minds, “Brexit” has ceased to be an institutional process and become a telos: a destination, even a utopian outcome, in which a newly emancipated Britain will hurtle towards unspecified glories.
The hardcore of the speech will be a readiness for straight withdrawal from the EU: from the single market, the jurisdiction of the European court of justice, the common security and defence policy, the common agricultural policy, the works. No half measures. Out means out.
Is this “hard Brexit”? Only if you see the choice between hard and soft varieties as a one-off decision, a fork in the road, a light switch. In practice, they are better understood as sequential phases rather than adversarial options. First we leave; then we rebuild a multilayered relationship with the EU based on, but not confined to, the deal reached by March 2019. That, at least, is the theory.
Though muscular Brexiteers will be delighted by May’s commitment to a clean break with the EU, they will be less pleased by her remarks on the need to give and take as we negotiate a completely new pact with the remaining 27 member states. As May herself said last April: “The reality is that we do not know on what terms we would win access to the single market. We do know that in a negotiation we would need to make concessions in order to access it.” That we are leaving is not in dispute. That our new alliance with the EU will bear a cost is the next big argument.
Those who know May well suggest that a precedent is under our very noses. As home secretary she opted out of 130 EU crime and policing measures – before opting back in to 35, including the European arrest warrant. This, broadly, is the model she will try to follow.
Indeed, the work has already begun. In Whitehall, detailed analysis of more than 50 industrial sectors is under way to inform future commercial and migration strategy. The Brexit secretary, David Davis, has already floated the idea of continued contributions to Brussels in return for targeted access to particular markets.
The government is quietly committed to Britain’s post-Brexit participation in EU patent protection. Having laboured so hard to ensure we signed up to the arrest warrant, it is difficult to imagine May not seeking a successor deal.
The question is whether the 27 will buy any of this. As the Guardian disclosed at the weekend, Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator, is seeking a “special” relationship with the City of London after Britain’s departure – one that will protect the access of the remaining member states to Britain’s financial services. Since Europe is our largest market for such services, this is no small breakthrough.
That said, there remains a deeply ingrained resistance on the continent to any deal that encourages the notion of an EU a la carte. Last month Angela Merkel told her party congress that “we will not allow any cherry-picking”. As one senior British ex-minister puts it: “Nobody in Europe sees this as an opportunity. It is something they have to manage and handle. But it’s a big mistake to imagine that they see this as an exciting chance for everyone to benefit.”
We shall soon discover whether Britain’s position as the EU’s largest export partner – accounting for 16% of its traded goods – is sufficient leverage to secure an advantageous deal. Remember that the Canada-EU trade negotiations almost failed because Wallonia’s regional parliament took against them.
All this lies ahead of the prime minster. Her immediate challenge is to calm the political seas around her, and to introduce a measure of realism to a national debate still shrill with anticipation and dread. She will make demands of ardent leavers as well as disappointed remainers.
Amid the cacophony, she will seek to assert her authority. For authority is what she will need most of all as she undertakes the toughest international negotiations to face a prime minister in recent memory. Unlikely as it sounds, Brexit is the easy bit.