Christopher Booker:

Last week, as we awaited today’s Brexit speech from Theresa May, it became clearer than ever just what a perilous path we are now treading. On one hand we had a dismally woolly speech from Dr Liam Fox, the International Trade Secretary, showing that he has learnt no more about the real world than was evident in the referendum campaign. Babbling about all those wonderful “free-trade deals” he imagines winning, he mentioned the World Trade Organisation (WTO) 20 times and the EU’s single market only once.

On the other hand, we had the heads of Nissan UK, Jaguar Land Rover and other spokesmen for the motor industry (contributing 7 per cent to our exports), the chief executive of Heathrow, one of our busiest ports of entry, the British Bankers’ Association and even unnamed “Treasury officials” all piling in to warn that, if we leave the single market, the results in terms of hideous complexities, added costs and firms leaving Britain would be catastrophic.

There are essentially three options being proposed. Those “hard Brexiteers” like Dr Fox who imagine that we could somehow just rely on “WTO rules” clearly have no idea where this would leave us. They talk about tariffs, as if these were the only problem about continuing to trade with the EU (easily our biggest trading partner), but these are now far less important than the vast thicket of regulatory “non-tariff barriers” such as customs procedures so complex that in practice they could shut us out of trading with the EU altogether. Indeed, worse still, the EU could continue selling to Britain, while its more than 1,000 points of customs entry would be all but closed to us.

Those who propose option two: that we could somehow, in just two years, negotiate a bespoke “one-off ” trade deal with the EU, seem unaware that the many such deals between the EU and other “third countries” are so complex that none have taken less than seven years to negotiate, involving thousands of pages of agreed terms and procedures. And none would give us anything like the full access to the single market.

That is why those who have done their homework (including those businesses which would be most directly affected) have come to realise that the only interim arrangement that could conceivably work is that “soft Brexit” option whereby, on leaving the EU, we remain in the wider European Economic Area (EEA), where we are now, and apply to join the two richest countries per capita in Europe, Norway and Switzerland, in the European Free Trade Area (Efta).

This alone would enable us to continue trading with the single market on similar terms as we do now, without any of that catastrophic disruption that would be created by either of the first two options. It would even give us some limited power, under the EEA Agreement, to control immigration from the rest of the EU. Furthermore, it would give us time to discuss all those other problems which need to be sorted out in just two years, such as what to do about agriculture, fisheries, our relationship with the EU’s 27 agencies, and dozens more.

There is no doubt that if the advantages and disadvantages of these three options were properly explained to the British people, this is the one the vast majority would favour, including pretty well all the 48 per cent who voted to remain last June. Having been assured that ultimately the Prime Minister, Theresa May, will be in charge of our EU negotiations, our one hope is that she will have taken properly expert advice, and not be heeding those naïve “hard Brexiteers” (doubtless likely to be in full voice at this week’s Tory conference) whose vacuous wishful-thinking could only lead us to being pushed over a very high and nasty cliff.