A year on, what’s the next step for May on a Brexit road measured by compromises?
Ayear after she opened the Article 50 process, setting the two-year clock ticking on Brexit, Theresa May can look back at a set of concrete achievements. Britain has agreed to a €45 billion-€55 billion financial settlement and a deal on Citizens’ Rights to minimise the impact on EU and UK citizens on either side of the Channel: whether you are Polish plumber in Lincolnshire, or a British pensioner on the Costa Brava, you can now assume your life will not be upended by Brexit.
On top of these two important pieces of “housekeeping”, Mrs May has also secured a 21-month “transition” deal. Few trade experts think that will be long enough to adapt to the new realities, but it is not unreasonable to assume that ways can be found to defer new cliff edges.
So far, so good. But as any mountaineer knows, the hardest part of reaching the summit is the final ascent.
This is about to begin, and what is striking about talking to key actors in the process, is how uncertain they are about the outcome of what follows next.
The road to Brexit has, thus far, been measured by necessary compromises.
The UK has made 80 per cent of the concessions to deliver a transition deal and open the door to talks on trade and the future relationship. Such is the coercive power of Article 50’s ticking clock.
The question now facing Downing Street strategists is whether the same pattern will repeat itself when it comes to delivering an end-state agreement with the EU.
Which brings us to the pivotal question of Ireland. Were it not for the unavoidable complication of the Irish border, the UK would be free to choose whatever form of Brexit it wanted and reap the benefits or suffer the consequences either way. Ireland makes that impossible.
Before politics, the root of the Ireland Brexit conundrum lies in geographical and legal fact: Brexit creates an EU frontier on the island of
‘So far, so good. But as any mountaineer knows, the hardest part of reaching the summit is the final ascent’
Ireland. Under WTO rules, let alone EU law, the UK cannot exit the EU’S customs union and avoid customs checks on its trade frontiers.
Mrs May has made three commitments on this question: to leave the EU customs union, avoid a hard border in Northern Ireland and defend the territorial integrity of the United Kingdom by not allowing a customs border to come up in the Irish Sea.
Only two of these three promises can hold true at any one time. This is the Irish trilemma that must be resolved; and on the current timetable, it needs to be done by the June 28-29 European Council.
The UK’S room for manoeuvre is already limited, having conceded the principle of a “backstop” that avoids a return to a hard border via alignment with EU rules and regulations.
This is the so-called Option C, where Option A is resolving the problem via the broader UK-EU trade negotiation, and Option B is using technological solutions, like number plate cameras and trusted trade schemes.
David Davis, the Brexit Secretary, says the UK can solve the problem via Option A and the future trading relationship, but the Canada-style FTA that the Government is currently seeking does not obviate the need for customs checks.
Brussels is ultra-clear that technical solutions or running a “dual external tariff ” where the UK collects tariffs for the EU on goods destined for the EU and not on others, is technically impossible and will not do the trick. Privately, Whitehall officials agree.
Given Mrs May’s commitment to avoid a border either in Ireland or the Irish Sea, the only logical answer to this question is for a UK-EU trading relationship to be sufficiently “highly aligned” with the EU that technology could, at the margin, fill the gaps.
The hope is that the EU can be persuaded this is a reasonable compromise, given that forcing a border down the Irish Sea would amount to a territorial “land grab” by Brussels, and be a step too far for many member states. Mrs May has rightly ruled this “unacceptable”.
So as one senior UK negotiator puts it: “There are probably only one or 1.1 different solutions here. It’s Option A, with perhaps a little bit of Option B, which looks very much like the version of Option C that we would sign up to anyway.”
As the hard choices crowd in after Easter, we are about to discover whether Mrs May can sell a level of alignment that is perilously close to the customs union that she has already dubbed a “betrayal” of Brexit.
The alternative is a hard border in Northern Ireland that imperils the Good Friday Agreement or a customs border in the Irish Sea that risks triggering a constitutional crisis.
Logic dictates that Brexiteers will soon be facing a dilemma of their own: is any Brexit deal better than no deal at all?