The opponents of Common Market 2.0 show why it’s the best Brexit option

Nick Boles’ Common Market 2.0 plan for Brexit has an awful lot going for it: it would honour the instruction of the British people to leave the European Union, while minimising the economic cost of that decision by keeping the UK largely within the Single Market.

And the fact that the previous paragraph will drive some people into a frenzy of rage says quite a lot about those people, and even more about the Brexit debate as a whole. 

In fact, the story of Common Market 2.0 is the story of Brexit. It captures many of the key disasters of this national debacle and highlights the way in which people on all sides have colluded to destroy a sensible centre where a workable Brexit compromise might have been built.  

There is guilt on all sides here, but we will start with the Brexiteers who are latterly realising that their purism may yet capsize their entire project. Today, Mr Boles is a hate-figure to some Leavers and his plan regarded as anathema, the most treacherous of betrayals of the great and pure Brexit that we are repeatedly told the British electorate demanded at the referendum.

This is, of course, cobblers.