Inside Chequers: will the PM finally decide what she wants for Brexit?

Next week’s meeting shows that, with nine months to go, the final deal is anyone’s guess

Chequers was donated to the British government to give prime ministers a country house to which they could retreat and escape the pressures of political life. Next week Theresa May will use it to intensify pressure, summoning Cabinet ministers there in the hope that they will agree – or at least compromise – with her on Brexit. There is no time left for debate, she will say: a decision is needed now. There is also a coded message: if you wish to resign, this would be a good time to do so. In Buckinghamshire, no one can hear you scream.

No one is looking forward to it. “We’re no closer to agreement now than six months ago,” one Cabinet member tells me. “We’ve made no progress, and relocating this indecision to a country house won’t change that.” Mrs May is more optimistic. She wants Cabinet members to consider two competing versions of Brexit: to smarten up existing borders with technology (the so-called “Maxfac” option) or her preferred idea of a “customs partnership”, where Britain would collect, and then perhaps later refund, EU tariffs. Her allies say there’s a third option: the “best of both worlds”, though it’s not clear what that is.

Quite a few ministers see the summit as a trap. Mrs May has lost several arguments so far, the last one being when she asked her Brexit “inner cabinet” if they agreed with her customs partnership plan. They didn’t, regarding it as a botched compromise that undermined the point of Brexit. Why leave the EU, only to act as its unpaid exciseman? This might make borders easier to manage, especially in Northern Ireland. But it could be a bureaucratic nightmare. Pro-brexit ministers were joined by Sajid Javid, the new Home Secretary, in voting down the idea by a six-to-five margin.

So Mrs May wants to take the same question to a different audience – a meeting of all her Cabinet members, two-thirds of whom supported Remain. “She’s making a mistake,” says a Cabinet minister. “She thinks they’ll back her, but she hasn’t worked out how many have switched. Or how many think that, if we are going to leave, we need a deal worthy of the name.” Jeremy Hunt, Gavin Williamson and Matt Hancock – the health, defence and culture secretaries – are among those whom the Brexiteers now count as allies. Not only on the customs “partnership” but in the bigger battles to come.

The biggest one is on immigration. Until a few months ago, the Remainers in the Cabinet were planning to offer a major concession to the European Union: they’d be prepared – in effect – to offer the free movement of people in return for free trade. This would have been an extraordinary concession which, to many, would torpedo the whole Brexit project. (This is precisely why Philip Hammond and Greg Clark, the Business Secretary, were keen on it.) But Javid has now pulled the plug on the whole idea, saying that if the EU wants any concessions on immigration then Michel Barnier will have to beg for them.

Mr Barnier has not had to beg for anything so far: concessions from Britain have been coming thick and fast. But he recently sent a message through the usual diplomatic back channels that the EU will retreat on some of its demands if Britain did the same. One Cabinet member regards this as a trick. “They keep doing this, and we keep falling for it. We’ve been making far too many offers, giving up too much ground. It’s time to stand fast, to be tough and make them negotiate for everything.”

Mrs May disagrees, and believes that a deal is within grasp – if only Britain would be more flexible. Perhaps on the money, perhaps on accepting the writ of the European Court of Justice. And perhaps on immigration, giving EU citizens some kind of advantage even if it stops short of free movement. She feels more confident, having won her recent parliamentary battles. She also thinks her rivals are relatively weak – Boris Johnson especially so, after the leaking of his two-word verdict on corporate lobbyists (“f— business”) and his fleeing to Afghanistan to avoid the Heathrow vote.

Quite a few Tories believe that there has been a semi-official operation to rough up Boris in the past few days, by encouraging business leaders to denounce him for his course language and a flinty heart. “It’s obvious that Hammond and Clark have given these businessmen the nod,” says one senior backbencher. “It’s about softening us up, ahead of a massive concession next week. Instead of negotiating, we’re crawling on our knees asking the EU, ‘What would you accept?’ They should be worrying about what the party would accept.”

But Mrs May is a lot less worried about her own party now, having offered to give Parliament a “meaningful vote” on a Brexit deal. In theory, this was to buy off Tory rebels led by Dominic Grieve. In practice, this has eliminated the prospects of a no-deal Brexit – at least, this is what some leading Brexiteer Cabinet members now believe.

“I could be wrong, but I’m afraid this option is now dead,” says one. This has further emboldened Mrs May. She is calling in Cabinet members for one-to-one meetings, stressing the pointlessness of her threatening to walk away if this is no longer an option.

Those who have spoken to the Prime Minister so far say she is presenting a story of a ticking clock. The EU Withdrawal Bill was passed this week; she’s meeting counterparts in Brussels today; the White Paper is due in two weeks’ time. So all that’s missing is a UK government Brexit strategy. Hence the drama of the next week’s awayday: to convene in an historical manor for a moment of historical importance. She has the people, the backdrop: everything, apart from the policy.

And this, of course, is the flaw in the whole process. The European leaders who meet Mrs May today will perhaps offer to help, but they’ll ask her: what does she want? To which she can only reply that, even now, she does not know and is convening a summit in the countryside in hope of finding out. It’s quite something: with just nine months to go, the final shape of Brexit is still anyone’s guess.