The EU would regret punishing us

Last Monday, Theresa May’s chief of staff talked junior ministers through her Mansion House speech. Gavin Barwell was frank with them. The decision to stay in various EU agencies — and the commitment that UK regulatory standards for goods would remain ‘substantially similar’ to Europe’s — would make it harder to negotiate big trade deals with other countries. But he argued that the trade-off in access to the EU market made it worthwhile. In keeping with the current Tory truce over Brexit, no one in the room dissented.

No. 10 believes that maintaining this peace is not just desirable, but essential. Barwell ended the meeting by emphasising that the lesson of Maastricht and Jeremy Corbyn’s behaviour over the customs union was that Labour would always take the opportunity to bring down a Conservative government. So the Brexit deal needed to be one that every Tory, from Anna Soubry to Jacob Rees-Mogg, could support.