The Economist Europe – July 22-28, 2017

The EconomistJuly 22nd 2017 43

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1

J

UST over a year has passed since Britain

voted to leave the European Union and

Theresa May subsequently became

prime minister. Nearly four months have

elapsed since Mrs May invoked Article 50

of the EUtreaty, setting a two-year deadline

for Brexit that will expire on March 30th

2019. The clock is ticking. And at first blush
      there has been much activity: a big speech
      by Mrs May atLancaster House in January;
      several government white papers; bills in-
      troduced in Parliament; and the start of for-
      mal Brexit negotiations in Brussels.
      Yet for all this activity, almost no pro-
      gress has been made towards deciding the
      form that Brexit should take. That is largely
      because the government is ambiguous
      over what it wants. Even issues that
      seemed settled in the Lancaster House
      speech have resurfaced since Mrs May lost
      her slim parliamentary majority in a snap
      election she called for June 8th.
      This is the political backdrop to the
      Brexit talks in Brussels. The second round
      started this week between negotiating
      teams led for the EUby Michel Barnier, the
      European Commission’s point man, and
      for Britain by David Davis, the Brexit secre-
      tary. Mr Barnier, who has a mandate ap-
      proved by European governments, is fo-
      cusing on the terms of the Article 50
      divorce: specifically, the rights ofEUciti-

Yet Mrs May’s election setback has

raised questions over whether her hard

Brexit should be softened. Although La-

bour’s leader, Jeremy Corbyn, backs end-

ing free movement, his manifesto also

talked of keeping all the benefits of the sin-

gle market. A week ago he refused to rule

out staying in the single market after all.

Meanwhile some ministersthink the cus-

toms union should be rethought. The latest

row is over Euratom, Europe’s atomic-ener-

gy treaty, which Britain will leave on exit-

ing the EU, but which some ToryMPs think

it should rejoin as an associate.

Mrs May’s lack of a majority in either

house means that the role of Parliament,

which had been sidelined, will be crucial.

The government hasjust published its EU

withdrawal bill and is promising at least

seven other Brexit bills, ranging from im-

migration and agriculture to trade and cus-

toms. Getting all these through unamend-

ed will be extremelydifficult. Opposition

MPs talk of fighting the government all the

way, with the help ofperhaps a dozen Tory

rebels, rather as happened to John Major

when he was trying to ratify the Maastricht

treaty in the 1990s. There is no clear parlia-

mentary majority for a hard Brexit, so de-

livering one will be very challenging, to

say the least.

The cake problem

Why is there so much confusion? One an-

swer is simply that extracting Britain from

a 44-year marriage is horrendously com-

plex. But the deeper point is that voters

were never told the truth about the trade-

offs inherent in Mrs May’s version of

Brexit. Brexiteers promised that, in the

words of Boris Johnson, now the foreign

secretary, Britain could have its cake and

zens in Britain and vice versa, how to avoid

a border between Northern Ireland and

the Irish republic, and Britain’s exit bill.

Only when he can report “sufficient

progress” on these will he be allowed to

start discussingthe long-term trade rela-

tionship between Britain and the EU.And

making progress will not be easy. An initial

British offer to give EUcitizens broadly the

same rights as Britons was met with com-

plaints that it was insufficiently generous.

The Irish border question, which has been

elevated to top-level diplomatic talks, has

no obvious answer. And although Britain

has conceded that it faces an exit bill, its

size is highly contentious. This week’s

round of talks concluded with little pro-

gress on any ofthe three main topics.

It is the long-term relationship that mat-

ters most. Because Mrs May and Mr Davis

insist thatthe only interpretation of the ref-

erendum is that Britons voted to take back

control of borders, laws and money, they

are pursuing what is known as a hard

Brexit: Britain must leave both the EU’s sin-

gle market and itscustomsunion, end free

movement of people from the EUand es-

cape from the oversight of the EU’s su-

preme court, the European Court of Justice

(ECJ). Instead itwill forge a “deep and spe-

cial partnership” with the EU, including a

comprehensive free-trade deal.

Britain and the European Union

The six flavours of Brexit

The EU offers many menus, from Norwegian to Turkish. But Britain cannot expect

to choose à la carte

Britain

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