A bad deal

During last year’s general election campaign, Theresa May declared that ‘You can only deliver Brexit if you believe in Brexit’. Unfortunately, her deal proves this point. It was negotiated by a team of people who imagined their job to be a damage-limitation exercise. They did not see Brexit as an opportunity and this is reflected in the terms put before the cabinet.

The deal falls far short of what was promised in May’s Lancaster House speech. She said she’d bring back a clean Brexit, taking Britain out of the Single Market, the Customs Union and the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice. The deal she ended up presenting to her cabinet will, in several important regards, fail all of these tests. But May has conveniently forgotten her tests. She doesn’t mention them any more. Instead, she talks about the uncertainty that might be unleashed by no deal (as a result of her failure to prepare for it) and the political weakness created by the result of the general election she called last year.