Canadian promise

Brussels should cease pretending that it is upset with Jeremy Hunt for comparing the EU with the Soviet Union. Apart from the likeness being quite strong – an ideological superstate continuing long after its bureaucratic economic plan had failed – EU officials never throw away an opportunity to abuse Britain, albeit often in anonymous private briefings. Senior EU diplomats recently said that Britain needed to experience its “darkest hour” before it would cave into Brussels’s demands. In that instance, their sense of history eluded them: Britain’s darkest hour was in fact followed by Britain and her allies liberating the continent from fascism.

Donald Tusk – who complained yesterday about Mr Hunt’s Soviet Union remarks – did have one interesting point to make: the EU is happy to talk about a post-brexit Canada-style free trade deal. Theresa May would doubtless counter that the problem is that Brussels prefers to keep Northern Ireland within the customs union, which would be constitutionally unacceptable to the British. Nevertheless, Canada is more likely as a basis for a future trading relationship than her current Chequers plan is – a plan so controversial both with the Europeans and her own MPS that she chose not to mention it in her conference speech.

If Mrs May were to switch to Canada, pushing for as many pluses as possible, she would have to address the Irish problem, undoubtedly, but at least she would be negotiating on one, narrow front that (as the European Research Group argues) might be solved with new technology. Nothing really has changed as a result of the Tory conference: Mrs May has her position, the EU won’t accept it. Someone will have to blink.