Brexit rhetoric is about to collide with Brexit reality

It would be stretching it to describe Mrs May’s return to London yesterday as triumphant, but after four days of dogged negotiations with her Democratic Unionist allies, she does at least live to fight another day.

The dawn dash to Brussels had a whiff of desperation about it – Donald Tusk, the European Council president, had to catch a plane to Hungary – but despite all the predictions of doom, Mrs May finally got the job done.

Or half the job. Or perhaps even less than half. As officials on both sides of the Channel are always warning, reaching the goal of sufficient progress and unlocking the door to talks on trade and transition was the easy part.

The fact it cost 10 precious months and €45billion to reach a mere “agreement to proceed” on to the substance of the EU and UK’S future relationship speaks to the enormity of the challenge that lies ahead.

In essence, when talks begin in the New Year, Mrs May faces a reckoning on the rhetoric that has driven the competing visions for Brexit, both in her party and in the country.

Mrs May remains adamant that Britain will embrace a new, global strategy, leaving the EU’S single market and customs union in order to reclaim the power to strike trade deals on our own.

She will also “take back control” of Britain’s borders, ending the EU doctrine of free movement that spurred so many to vote Leave, and restoring the supremacy of UK courts over the European Court of Justice. At the same time as ending free movement and seeking to go it alone in order to achieve an as yet undetermined global competitive advantage, Mrs May wishes to build a “deep and special partnership” with our European allies.

This has been the constant promise of the past 18 months. Whether it can survive the next 18 months will be the test of Mrs May’s premiership. The EU is adamant that it will not allow the UK to see marginal advantage, without imposing equal or greater marginal costs in terms of frictions to trade.

Michael Gove says he wants all that fine freedom to diverge, but at the same time wants the EU to offer a trade deal that covers both goods, in which the EU runs a large surplus with the UK, and services, where the UK holds the upper hand.

Mrs May is equally clear. She wants neither the Norway arrangement, where you accept free movement and pay large contributions in exchange for access to the single market, nor a limited Canada deal, which would impose “such a restriction on our mutual market access” that all would lose out.

But that, according to Michel Barnier, the EU’S chief negotiator, is precisely where you arrive at if you follow Mrs May’s own red lines on immigration, the ECJ and trade to their logical conclusion. “What are you left with?”, he asked rhetorically yesterday. “Just one thing – a free-trade agreement on the Canadian model.”

Perhaps the EU is bluffing about its determination to impose hard choices on Mrs May. Perhaps everyone taking a decent breather over Christmas, coupled with the promise to pay €45billion, will soften these hard edges and take the heat out of things.

But no one should bet on that. As the row over the Irish question in recent days has shown, when Brexit rhetoric collides with Brexit reality, it can have explosive consequences.

A giant minefield lies ahead.