Why Brexiteers should support this deal

When Britain voted on whether to leave the EU or remain within it there were valid arguments on both sides. But on one thing most leavers and remainers could surely have agreed: the Brexit would be a pointless and wasteful exercise unless Britain would retrieve the powers that voters wanted. A deal that left us under EU rules – as outlined by Theresa May’s Chequers proposal – would mean all of the pain but minimal gain. Boris Johnson’s test was whether he could do better.

This is what has made the past four and a half years so agonising. For much of that time we seemed destined for a halfway house which nobody really wanted – a state of limbo in which we would be forever bound to follow EU rules and policies yet have no say in the making of those rules. Various models were suggested: a Norwegian model where we would leave the customs union but stay in the single market, a Philip Hammond model where we would do the opposite; the Chequers deal would have been defeat.