May’s Brexit battle plan buys time to hunt a unicorn

The breathless media battle plan to sell a Brexit deal to the nation provides unwitting insight into the Government’s own estimation of the value of what it is flogging.

Pointedly, ministers and business leaders will be instructed to compare the deal to the risk of a “no deal”, but not to the UK’S “current deal” with the EU.

The document is already clearly out of date (it presupposes a completed deal is done) but the warnings issued to the Cabinet yesterday that it would be a disaster to let negotiations slip into December make clear just how badly the Government now wants to get this done.

To that end, Brexiteer cabinet ministers appear to have agreed to drop their demands for a “unilateral” right to pull out of the Irish backstop, and accept that some form of “mutual” dispute mechanism will have to suffice instead.

This compromise now apparently has the backing of Geoffrey Cox, the Attorney General, and will involve a mutual dispute resolution system to enable the UK to unwind the backstop, but only in consultation with the EU.

This could involve a committee of UK and EU diplomats in the first instance, then an independent arbitration panel if they cannot agree.

(This is the same mechanism which governs the EU’S association agreement with Ukraine and is reportedly agreed in principle as the basis for governing the rest of the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement).

But already there is plenty of puffing-out of cheeks in Brussels about the time it will take to negotiate a new customs deal. And now the British want a bespoke “review” mechanism for the backstop? Mrs May would be wise not to assume the EU will follow her timetable.

Michel Barnier, the EU chief negotiator, was notably tepid on the matter yesterday, saying he wasn’t clear on the need for a “review clause” and warning everyone not to believe everything they read in British newspapers. It is Mr Barnier who sets the tempo of the talks, and officials in Brussels are clear they won’t be bounced into an over-hasty deal.

Given the obvious urgency now on the UK side of the Channel, you can bet Mr Barnier (even as he demands further concessions) will remind Mrs May that the “clock is ticking” if she wants her deal by Christmas.

Which points to a much more fundamental problem not addressed in this document: to what future, exactly, is the UK trying to escape to?

Brexiteers are determined not to get trapped in a customs union with the EU, but embrace the promise of a “Supercanada” trade deal that they say can make good on the Government’s pledge to avoid a return to a hard border in Ireland.

But the only way to do that, given the pledges made to maintain an “invisible” border, is to accept customs checks in the Irish Sea, which Mrs May rightly says is “unacceptable”.

The UK commitment to “no

‘Mr Barnier will remind Mrs May that the “clock is ticking” if she wants her deal by Christmas’

additional infrastructure” on the Irish border sets a near impossible bar, which explains why both of Mrs May’s suggestions for clearing it (the Maxfac and the dual-tariff Future Customs Arrangement) are dismissed as likely as “unicorns” to ever work.

Which means that even if Mrs May can sell the review mechanism to her Cabinet; even if she can then persuade Mr Barnier to agree to such a thing; and even if she can railroad Parliament into backing the deal with her sparkly media plan, to what end?

The best one can say (and you’ll not read this in the media battle plan) is that it buys some time, or as one negotiator rather cruelly put it, the chance to go on a unicorn hunt.