MPs have duty to test May Brexit plan

There is much detail to be absorbed in several hundred pages of a draft Brexit agreement, covering the two-year transition to an undefined future relationship, but the compromises have been visible for months. To satisfy Prime Minister Theresa May’s determination to end free movement of people, the UK has excluded itself from the single market and so opted for an inferior trade relationship with the EU.

In deference to the Good Friday agreement and the need for a frictionless Irish border, the UK will be in a “temporary” customs union. But that requires adherence to a common external tariff, which Brexiters see as an unacceptable curtailment of trading sovereignty. An escape clause has been included, the legal enforceability of which will be hotly debated in the coming weeks. The referendum result demanded the government negotiate an exit from the EU, but MPs must not allow the prime minister to aggrandise her deal as a sacred extension of that mandate. It is the culmination of a set of political choices built around the Eurosceptic tradition of misrepresenting the European project. The advent of a concrete deal presents an opportunity for a more informed debate. MPs have a duty to measure May’s text not just in terms of whether it clears the bar of getting Britain out of the EU, but on a fuller test of service to the national interest.