Brexit: are we heading for a crash-landing?

Boris Johnson made a “promising start” as Foreign Secretary, said John Rentoul in The Independent – “by which I mean he exceeded the low expectations of him by not falling flat on his face and causing a serious diplomatic incident within days”. But his recent attempts at European diplomacy have been dire. Last week he told a Czech newspaper it was “bollocks” to claim that freedom of movement was a founding principle of the EU – a schoolboy error that provoked withering responses from across Europe. Later, he got into an argument with the Italian economics minister Carlo Calenda about prosecco. “He basically said: ‘I don’t want free movement of people but I want the single market,’” Calenda told Bloomberg. “I said: ‘No way.’ He said: ‘You’ll sell less prosecco.’ I said: ‘OK, you’ll sell less fish and chips, but I’ll sell less prosecco to one country and you’ll sell less to 27 countries.’” Negotiating on this level, Calenda concluded, “is a bit insulting”.

But it’s not really Johnson’s fault, said The Independent: where Brexit is concerned, he’s selling a duff prospectus. The Goverment seems to want to stay in the single market while opting out of free movement – and, according to recent reports, leaving the EU customs union, too. It is demanding terms that, as EU leaders have stated again and again, are simply not available. On the current trajectory, Britain will invoke Article 50 next year and “crash-land out of the EU in 2019 with no completed deal”, said Philip Collins in The Times. It’s becoming clear that there’s only one way out of this mess: Theresa May must seek “a transitional deal”, by joining Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein in the European Economic Area (EEA). This would allow us to stay within the single market, but to opt out of EU law in areas such as agriculture and fisheries (while, for the time being, allowing EU migration). “Crucially, we would also have bought time to do a proper negotation.”

May hinted this week that a transitional deal might be for the best, said James Kirkup in The Daily Telegraph. She told the CBI that she would seek to avoid a sudden “cliff edge” when Britain leaves the bloc. But Leavers would see such a plan as a betrayal. In the UK, “temporary arrangements have a time-honoured habit of becoming rather permanent”. If we joined the EEA in 2019, it’s “a racing certainty” that many would demand a new referendum before we left it for good. For now, May is keeping her cards close to her chest, said Fraser Nelson in the same paper. In Europe there’s a political need “to deny her what she wants”. So her refusal to say what she means by Brexit – while making vague and rather wild demands – makes perfect sense.