ber-state-sized budget contributions to the
EU during this period. Why? Because he is
sceptical of the civil service’s ability to get
the bureaucracy ready for leaving in March
2019, and so doesn’t regard a two-year
transition as a particularly bad thing.
To Boris, the cash matters. He was furi-
ous when he was briefed on the plans for the
Florence speech, as he remains determined
to honour his pledge to ‘take back control’ of
£350 million a week. If the UK pays into the
EU as normal during any transition, there
will be no extra cash available for the NHS, or
any other public service. This would severely
hamper any Johnson leadership bid when
May steps down. His opponents would say:
we’ve left the EU, Boris, where’s the money?
This is a particularly sensitive point for
Boris because ever since the referendum
his internal critics have been warning Tory
MPs that the £350 million line is the equiva-
lent of Nick Clegg’s tuition fees pledge: an
unforgivable act of perfidy in the eyes of the
public. As one of those who will be involved
in any Johnson leadership bid says: ‘He
needs to detoxify himself with that money.’
When Boris was told he couldn’t deliver a
speech ahead of May’s visit to Florence, he
went public — and repeated the £350 mil-
lion figure. He pointedly made no reference
to transition, and suggested that the money
the UK sends to the EU would come back
straight after Brexit.
In recent days, he has calmed down. I’m
told he could ‘live with the transition’ but
as long as the Prime Minister makes clear
that it will be followed by ‘a complete, clean
break’ with the EU. On this point, Gove
agrees. He is concerned about any system in
which the UK would have to keep mirror-
ing the single market in the entire economy
rather than just being EU-export compliant.
One friend of Gove’s says that the role
of the European Court of Justice is crucial.
May has previously said she will not accept
its writ. But what Gove worries about is the
UK being bound by the ECJ indirectly, and
forced to copy its judgments in some way.
ECJ rulings are not always in this country’s
best interests, as Marina Wheeler explains
on page 14.
If opposition to some kind of EEA-minus
deal is the hill on which Boris chooses to fight,
others will back him. One minister stresses
that if May goes down that route it would
be ‘very danger ous for her’. To date, she has
been supported by the 80-odd Tory MPs
who are belong to the European Research
Group, which campaigns for a clean Brexit.
But they would turn on her if it looked as
if Britain would be made to march in lock-
step with the EU’s regulatory framework.
Boris had become fed up at being
cut out: not invited to key meetings
and not allowed to use his talentsMay has three problems. She is sincere
in her desire for a deal that respects the ref-
erendum result, so a lot of energy will be
focused on trying to persuade her that an
EEA-minus deal fulfils this function. Its
advocates argue that it does so because free
movement would end. Dissenters say —
with some justification — that it does not,
because this country would not be ‘taking
back control’ in any meaningful sense.
The next issue is whether the UK could
walk away without a deal. May famously
said that ‘no deal is better than a bad deal’.
But there is growing concern in government
that preparations for ‘no deal’ are so inade-
quate that the UK couldn’t actually do that.
I understand that civil servants in David
Davis’s Department for Exiting the Europe-
an Union have taken to writing emails set-
ting out the problems, chiefly to ensure that
their backs are covered should any Chilcot-
style inquiry look into what went wrong. The
chances of ‘no deal’ may be as low as one
in five. But even that should demand a level
of preparation that is simply not happening.
Some even suspect that Sir Jeremy Hey-
wood is relaxed about the lack of planning
for a ‘no deal’ scenario because he thinks
this means the government won’t walk
away without one. One Tory Eurosceptic
complains: ‘We prepared for the millennium
bug, we stockpile vaccines for bird flu and
all sorts of epidemics. So, why aren’t we pre-
paring for “no deal”?’ It is a good question
and makes you wonder whether it is incom-petence, complacency — or a more cynical
desire to rule out this option out by stealth.
Then we come to the third issue: one that
the British Brexit debate too often forgets:
there is another side in this negotiation.
Even if May is persuaded to hug Europe
close, the EU may have other ideas. One fig-
ure who has the ear of Davis at the Depart-
ment for Exiting the European Union says:
‘EEA-lite is a non-starter as the EU won’t
accept it without free movement’, which the
referendum took off the table. If this is the
case, it will render much of the governmental
discussion of the past few weeks irrelevant.
Europe has destroyed the past three Tory
prime ministers. After the referendum, one
figure turfed out with David Cameron said
that at least it would stop the Conservatives
banging on about Europe. Instead, the fight
is intensifying as the endgame approaches.
Whatever deal May agrees will be a com-
promise, both within her own party and with
the EU itself. To the Remainers, the deal
won’t be as good as membership, while the
Brexiteers will have to admit that the new
arrangement does not take back as much
control as they would like. So, the 50-year
Tory civil war over Europe continues.
The battleground will be how much
Britain should diverge from the EU and
chart its own course in the world. This might
not turn into the Tories’ own Hundred
Years’ War. But it would be no surprise if it
did for another three Tory prime ministers
before it is finally over and done with.