Janet Daley:

The pernicious attempt to exhaust the majority’s desire to quit the EU is a strategy doomed to fail

lying to us for a generation by implying that we were still a selfgoverning nation state, when in fact virtually all of our legal and regulatory system was being dictated by Brussels – hence the dire complexity of our withdrawing. Either way, Philip Hammond’s tribe have been deceiving the electorate, predicting doom when it suited them regardless of the facts, and deliberately concealing the true dimensions of our loss of sovereignty.

Now, to this lack of credibility, they have added treachery. Not just to the Government but much more importantly to the British people who are, bless them, proving remarkably resilient. This may be because it is not just empirical evidence that the Remain campaign avoids confronting (don’t aeroplanes from non-member countries such as the United States manage to get landing rights at European airports?) but simple common sense.

Of course, you don’t enter a negotiation on the assumption that you will never, under any circumstances, walk away. Who does that? In the real world of transactions, as everybody keeps saying, such an idea is ludicrous. And it follows from this that you must make detailed plans (involving money) to prepare for that possibility. Otherwise nobody will believe that you are serious. The reason that three quarters of the public tell pollsters that they believe “no deal is better than bad deal” is because that statement is virtually tautological, and everybody who can see that would presumably also be likely to accept that preparation for such a contingency is required. Which means that the Hammond argument is, yet again, a blithe insult to the intelligence of the electorate.

But this is a power struggle between the EU and the much-diminished national institutions of an individual state which must not be seen to win whatever the cost. The “s” word – sabotage – is being used openly now, by a distinguished former chancellor no less. What Nigel Lawson was suggesting was that there is a concerted conspiracy to undermine the Government’s position, an impression Mr Hammond tried to defuse last Friday by wildly referring to the EU as “the enemy”.

Again, to the not-stupid public, it is perfectly clear what is going on here. The Remain rump in government is quite shamelessly colluding with the EU establishment to enforce (or at least pretend to accept) an arbitrary, perverse and utterly illogical set of priorities for these negotiations which ensure that they will never really begin, let alone end. To say that we must settle the precise amount we will pay now and over the coming years before we are permitted to discuss trade relations is tantamount to taking out a mortgage before you know what your income and outgoings are going to be. It is designed to make the process not just difficult but impossible.

There is no doubt, for all that I have said about national courage and scepticism, that this dirty game is having an effect. Anxiety is being actively encouraged as if this were a virtuous thing to do – in the name of “realism”. But realism is not unconnected to what you make happen. Virtually every voice at the real economic coal face is saying that “uncertainty” is what is most destructive: the longer these nonnegotiations trail on in recrimination and ambiguity, the more damage is

at telegraph.co.uk/ opinion done to business confidence. What is needed is clarity and unified leadership. It is now positively irresponsible to create dissension and disunity: to encourage the EU steamroller to believe that their operatives at Westminster can deliver submission with one more push.

What the EU negotiators and their friends at the Treasury are desperately trying to forestall is that moment when the situation – the outlines and parameters of the future relationship, whatever they may be – becomes perfectly clear. Because, as many business leaders are saying, that will be the first day of the rest of their lives. They will adapt and innovate to suit those new conditions and begin to create a positive future, whatever their views about Brexit may once have been. That is what Brussels most fears.

This is what much of the public believes too – which is why it is angry as well as understandably anxious, and is constantly telling pollsters that it wants everybody to “get on with it”. Another message to Remain: trying to exhaust the country’s desire for Brexit is a failing strategy. What you are actually exhausting is its patience with obstruction and prevarication.

Ironically, in the midst of all this has come a glimmering: a hint of a blink from the EU Council, which might – just might – consider wavering on that merciless list of priorities for negotiation. It might – just might – consider talking about future trade relations at the same time as discussing the amount of cash we will have to hand over.

This could be the last week of the phoney war: not the beginning of the end but at least the end of the beginning.

‘Anxiety is being actively encouraged as if this were a virtuous thing to do’