The only way to Brexit that fits the PM’s bill

It has recently become painfully obvious that one of the greatest hidden prices we have paid for our decades of political involvement with “Europe” is the extent to which, in those 40 years, our political class has switched off from trying to understand the immense complexities of the system of government we have increasingly been ruled by. Daily we hear and read politicians and commentators showing that they haven’t begun to grasp the reality of what we are up against, as we try to disentangle ourselves from that labyrinthine system.

Understandable though it may be that Theresa May should keep her cards close to her chest – not least because she and her closest advisers are still on a sharp learning curve as to what “Brexit means Brexit” really means – our starting point must be the single clearest clue she has yet given as to the direction of her thinking. Our aim on leaving the EU, she told the Tory conference, must be to retain “maximum possible access to the European market”, while escaping subservience to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) and regaining some “control over immigration”.

This shows that she (and her Chancellor, Philip Hammond) are fully aware of what they have been told by the City and many others: that dropping out of the single market would be incredibly damaging. Just to rely, as some wishful thinkers are still urging, on those “WTO rules” which take no account of the regulatory “non-tariff barriers” that would deny us entry to that market, would be catastrophic.

Equally, it rules out any idea that, in the two years available, we could somehow negotiate a bespoke free trade deal with the EU, when all precedent shows that this would take far too long and could only give us much less than that “maximum access” to the market that Mrs May spoke of.

There really is only one way to achieve her stated aim. That is for Britain to remain in the wider European Economic Area (EEA) and apply to join Norway in the European Free Trade Association (Efta). Those arguing that this would be little different from staying in the EU are clearly unaware that, of the 19,886 laws currently in force in the EU, Efta/EEA members have to comply with only 5,288, barely a quarter, almost all concerned with trade. Nor would we be under the jurisdiction of the ECJ (although Efta’s own court does choose to shadow some ECJ rulings).

In addition, although much of our immigration has nothing to do with the EU, those countries do also have some right to limit migration from within the EU; and the power to negotiate independent trade deals with countries outside the EU, as Mrs May and her ministers want.

Furthermore, we must realise that, in those two years, our negotiations to leave the EU must cover many issues other than trade. Whatever deal we reach, it will need a “secession treaty” ratified by all other EU members, not dissimilar to the “accession treaties” negotiated by countries wishing to join them. Look on the Europa website at the template for such treaties and they cover 35 separate policy areas, such as agriculture, fisheries, foreign policy and many more, of which only a handful relate to trade.

That, as much as anything, shows why we need to keep the trade aspects of our Brexit deal as simple as possible, to give enough time for discussion of all those other issues – or we risk the ultimate disaster, whereby we drop out of the EU without any deal at all.