Nick Timothy

The Norway option and Chequers are both flawed, but time is running out for the UK to agree an approach

It was not supposed to be like this. Theresa May’s original Brexit strategy – articulated in her Lancaster House speech in January 2017 – did not envisage anything like the plan agreed at Chequers.

The alternative, the draft White Paper prepared by David Davis before he resigned as Brexit Secretary, was more faithful to that original vision. It proposed cooperation on regulation – through mutual recognition of standards – and would have allowed Britain to escape the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice and diverge from European laws.

Olly Robbins, the Government’s Brexit negotiator, no doubt argued that Davis’s approach was not “negotiable”. But little is negotiable when you approach the Brexit talks the way the Government has since the election. Not one of Britain’s negotiating strengths – our exit payment, our contribution to European security, the volume of goods we import, or the different interests of EU member states – has been exploited.

Add to that the Government’s failure to plan properly for no deal, its willingness to dance to the European tune on the Northern Irish border, and pro-european MPS acting as Michel Barnier’s useful idiots, and it is no surprise that a deal that meets Britain’s interests has proved difficult to negotiate.

So we have the Chequers plan, which requires us to rubber-stamp EU laws, follow the rulings of the Court of Justice, and adopt a customs policy that will make it difficult to strike trade deals with other countries. Chequers leaves Britain – the mother of parliaments and the world’s fifth biggest economy – with a democratic deficit that will only get worse as Brussels makes further demands of us.

This is deeply depressing, but we cannot turn back the clock to undo mistakes already made. The question is where we will end up when the Article 50 deadline arrives next March.

Leaving without an agreed deal is now difficult to contemplate. Philip Hammond blocked meaningful no-deal planning, and MPS will do everything they can to stop a no-deal Brexit. If Parliament asks, Brussels might grant Britain more negotiating time in return for the softest possible Brexit agreement – or staying in.

The Chequers plan, ministers insist, is therefore the only way of making sure Britain leaves the EU, and does so in an orderly fashion. But as the knife-edge votes in Parliament this week demonstrate, Chequers might not survive. And even if it does, its problems are obvious.

As a result, some Leave supporters are turning their attention to the Norway model as an alternative to Chequers. And if this sounds surprising, it is because it is. Membership of the European Economic Area (EEA) is normally supported by Remainers who hope to secure a soft Brexit.

So what is going on? The Norway model, its new advocates suggest, is our “port in a storm”. Instead of negotiating a withdrawal treaty, as the Government is doing, they say Britain should simply leave the European Union and fall back on its membership of the EEA. This should be simple, they say, because the UK remains a signatory to the EEA Agreement.

Supporters say this approach would bring two benefits. First, it would effectively reset the negotiations on the withdrawal and future framework treaties. And secondly, it would give Britain time to come up with a better plan than Chequers and negotiate its future relationship under a new prime minister after the next election.

We would leave the EU, but there would be no need for the transition period that has been agreed by Theresa May. The EU’S unacceptable Northern Ireland backstop provision would become obsolete. And Britain would not have to pay its “divorce bill”. It would, in the words of the author Rupert Darwall, allow Britain to tell Michel Barnier to “sod off ”.

Things are rarely so simple, however. The plan may not be legally feasible: government lawyers advise that Britain’s EEA membership will become inapplicable after Brexit, although this is disputed.

But even if the lawyers are wrong, EEA membership means accepting EU rules on goods and services, making annual payments towards the Brussels budget, and accepting the unlimited free movement of people. We would still follow Court of Justice case law indirectly via the European Free Trade Association court. And we would still need to come up with a customs solution for Northern Ireland.

The danger would be that MPS – most of whom wish we were not leaving the EU at all – would conspire to keep us inside the EEA for good. Some would try to use it as a springboard back into the EU.

EEA enthusiasts are right about one thing, however. Britain desperately needs a safe landing zone for next March. The EEA model is flawed and so, too, is Chequers. But however imperfect the options, Britain needs an agreed approach and we need one soon. If we leave the EU in chaos – or we are bullied into staying in after all – a national humiliation greater than Suez awaits.

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