Mrs May faces ‘B-day’ – and another rejection

THERESA May’s “third way” effort to find a new EU-UK relationship after Brexit centres on a “common rule book” shared by Brussels and London on customs rules and product standards.

We know that this will be hard to get past those ultra-Brexiteers, who want to leave the EU and slam the door behind them. Lest we drown early in all this jargon let us remind ourselves.

The proposed Brexit “first way”, beloved of defeated Remainers, was the UK keeping as close to EU customs rules and product standards, effectively having almost full membership of the customs union and single market. The would-be “second-way” was optimising the use of technology to do what Irish EU Commissioner Phil Hogan called a “cyber border” and London officials called maximum facilitation – dubbed “max fac”.

You don’t have to be a political Einstein to guess the “third way” is a medley of options one and two. If it is to fly in Brussels it needs to be close to the first option; to get off the ground in Britain it must be heavily comparable with the second option.

Put another way, there is a big risk that not much will emerge over the coming days, or that the EU will reject what emerges.

Today, the British Prime Minister hosts her fractious ministerial team at her official country retreat in Chequers. Predictably, the trend of her new proposals are still anathema to the ultra-Brexiteers inside her cabinet and her party. These militant Leave advocates insist Mrs May must keep to her promise of two years ago: “Brexit means Brexit.”

That cliché means the UK must leave the EU customs union, the single market, and also ban the Luxembourgbased EU Court from any future role in resolving trade and product disputes involving the UK. Mrs May’s “third way” means diluting all of these facets and keeping Britain effectively within the EU customs union, very close to the EU single market, at least for goods, and as close as possible for services.

The Brexiteers ideally see the future as Britain soon becoming a big world trade partner in its own right, dispensing with more than two score global trade deals done in recent decades between the EU and the known world. These Brexiteers now look at the prospect of the Irish Border backstop, or a variant of it, becoming an important feature in framing EU-UK relations post Brexit.

There is no shortage of noise from both sides of this bitter argument ahead of today’s meeting.

Britain’s EU neighbours are becoming increasingly focused on immediately pressing issues like migration, international trade wars and reform of the eurozone. There was never an abundance of patience with the UK on Brexit.

Still, today the EU awaits white smoke from Chequers.