Why don’t the pro-EU crowd join the Tories?

Theresa May has a rare talent for turning decent policy into a political problem. Her general election manifesto last year contained an unusually high number of quite sensible and even sometimes progressive ideas: it’s quite common around Westminster these days to hear Tory and Labour people alike admit that things like the “dementia tax”, a full-scale review of post-18 education and some technical-sounding stuff on corporate governance were all, in retrospect, quite solid, worthy attempts to address big public policy problems. The problem, of course, was selling that stuff to the punters.

Now we have the Chequers deal on Brexit. As a Remain voter who has since last June argued that the only logical endpoint for Britain’s post election Brexit journey was some sort of Norwegian settlement, I think Chequers is the least worst of the various bad options facing Britain right now. As such, I wish more people would support it.