Welcome to the Guardian’s weekly Brexit briefing, a summary of developments as Britain starts edging towards the EU exit. If you’d like to receive it as a weekly email, do please sign up here.
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The big picture
The good news: we finally saw the broad strokes (though nothing of the fine detail, which is where the devil will obviously be) of what the government wants Brexit to mean – and what it doesn’t.
The bad news: it’s hard to see what on earth would induce the EU and its member states to endorse this vision, and one or two cabinet members may have a hard time getting behind it too.
What’s more, we learned that some not insignificant non-EU countries – major investors in the UK – are deeply worried about the consequences.
The government’s number one red line will be controlling EU immigration, it emerged after a cabinet away-day last week, and MPs will not get a vote when article 50 is triggered and the formal two-year exit process begins.
Britain will aim for a “unique model” allowing it to limit immigration but also provide “a positive outcome” for trade in goods and services so the country can “confirm its place as one of the great trading nations in the world”.
Making his first statement as Brexit minister in parliament on Monday, David Davis, whose department’s 180 staff are analysing how Brexit might affect 50 different business sectors, was similarly optimistic – and similarly vague:
Brexit isn’t about making the best of a bad job. It is about seizing the huge and exciting opportunities that will flow from a new place for Britain in the world. There will be new freedoms, new opportunities, new horizons for this great country.
No clues as to how or when exactly this might be achieved, of course, although Davis did confirm that Brexit meant leaving the EU (who’d have thought it?) and regaining control of “our borders, our laws and our taxpayers’ money”.
Britain would be seeking “access” to the single market, he said, although not necessarily full membership, and this would not come at a cost to trade:
This government is looking at every option, but the simple truth is that if a requirement of membership is giving up control of our borders I think that makes it very improbable.
Opposition MPs dismissed this “best of both worlds” deal as a pipe dream. EU leaders have always said free trade on anything like the terms Britain currently enjoys must mean single-market membership, which in turn means freedom of movement.
Meanwhile, both the US and Japan were warning the prime minister, Theresa May, that from where they stand, Brexit trouble looms as well.
President Obama said at the G20 summit in China that Britain wouldn’t be a priority for a US trade deal because Washington wanted to focus on trade negotiations with the EU and pacific nations first.
Japan issued an unprecedented 15-page warning about the impact of Brexit, saying there could be a string of corporate departures from the UK if the privileges that come with single market membership are not maintained.
May also risked running into conflict with some of her own ministers by ruling out the kind of Australian-style “points-based” immigration system the leave camp – including foreign minister Boris Johnson – promised, pledging instead merely “some control” over EU immigration.
Downing Street said this was because points-based systems didn’t work, but after the PM also stepped back from other key campaign pledges – to commit an extra £100m a week to the NHS, scrap VAT on fuel and end all EU budget contributions forever – former Ukip leader Nigel Farage was quick to accuse her of betraying Brexit values.
All of which suggests fun times ahead, with the PM’s cautious determination to be bound only by delivering “the best deal for Britain” likely to fuel fears among leave voters and politicians that “Brexit means Brexit” actually means a pale shadow of what people wanted.
Further muddying the waters earlier in the week was former prime minister Tony Blair, who popped up on French radio to say remain campaigners should continue warning of the costs of Brexit and that Britain could conceivably remain in the EU if public opinion shifts over the next few years:
Who made a rule that we have to stop the debate now? There will come a moment when we have had the negotiations and can see the terms, and we will be able to say that it is a good idea or perhaps that it is a bad idea, with major consequences.
The view from Europe
Europe, essentially, would just like Britain to get on with it, because it has more important things to worry about.
Former European Council president Herman van Rompuy lamented to Euractiv that Brexit would run and run, but was more a reflection of a specific national sentiment and circumstances than of a European phenomenon:
Brexit is a political amputation. But Britain was never a full member of the European Union; it had even stopped playing a role in EU foreign policy. The negotiations will take years and years.
Koon Lenaerts, president of the European Court of Justice, agreed Britain was never really European and said he thought Brexit might never happen at all. He told Dutch public broadcaster NTR:
We don’t know yet if and when and under what conditions [it might happen]. We have had the referendum, which was a clear political signal, but a lot still has to happen. Everything is still somewhat speculative.
Frans Timmermans, the European Commission’s first vice-president, put his finger on the crux of the matter, telling AFP:
The onus is on the country that decides to leave to tell us how they want to leave, and I think that’s the starting point of the discussion … Perhaps they should first get their act together and tell us what they really want.
Meanwhile, back in Westminster:
Conservative divisions over Brexit are as nothing compared to Labour’s increasingly acrimonious split.
As the party’s leadership contest rumbles on, the challenger, Owen Smith, warned members that re-electing the current leader Jeremy Corbyn would see the party “consigned to irrelevance” and allow the Conservatives to rule for decades:
It’s a disastrous government we’ve got right now, and where are we in offering really robust, serious and credible opposition to that? Nowhere. And Jeremy has to be held accountable for that.
Corbyn, meanwhile, has revealed he is investigating allegations that the contest is being rigged against him, possibly by party officials:
I’m surprised at the numbers of people who’ve been denied a vote and at the lack of reason that’s been given to people. I’m concerned about that because surely in a democratic process everyone should be entitled to vote unless there is some very good reason.
You should also know
- Britain’s economy continues to weather the immediate shock of the leave vote, with the UK’s vital services sector staged a record monthly rise in August. (This is not a “post-Brexit bounce”: Brexit has not yet even begun to be negotiated.)
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The EU referendum debate was “dire”, according to the Electoral Reform Society, who found “glaring democratic deficiencies” in the run-up to the Brexit vote and a public feeling “totally ill-informed”, disengaged and confused about contrasting and overwhelmingly negative claims.
- Poland can play intermediary in Brexit talks, according to deputy PM Mateusz Morawiecki, who believes Britain will have to make concessions on free movement and that a Norway-style EEA deal may be best.
- The department for exiting the EU has a Twitter account.
- According to the Financial Times, one-fifth of City revenues – some £9bn – could be at risk from a “hard” Brexit [paywall] with restricted single market access.
- Martin Roth, the German director of London’s V&A museum, is leaving because of Brexit. He said the vote felt like a personal defeat and that he was particularly upset to hear aggressive “war rhetoric” during the referendum campaign.
Read these:
Senior Tory MP Andrew Tyrie’s reasoned pamphlet for Open Europe argues that the government must now set out in detail what it hopes to achieve from Brexit talks, explain that much of what was promised will come at considerable economic and fiscal cost, and manage “sky-high” public expectations.
In the Observer, veteran economics commentator William Keegan said Brexit is “truly daunting – the biggest crisis I have ever known”, while in the Guardian, Martin Kettle warned that May and her government have an extremely problematic few months ahead:
They know they are advancing into an autumn in which all the big political and economic calls are connected and all have big consequences. They mostly understand the problems they face. What they lack at this stage are the answers. But the inescapable truth is that all the choices that follow from Brexit are difficult – and many of them are very bad ones indeed.
In the New Statesman, Stephen Bush argues that Theresa May will never get the deal she wants from Europe because for domestic political reasons Europe can’t afford to give it to her; and also that it is still way, way too early to say whether Brexit has been a success because it hasn’t happened yet.
May’s dilemma, he adds, is this:
There is a path to a successful Brexit that doesn’t knacker the British economy – it just involves breaking many of the promises made by Vote Leave, something she has sounded reluctant to do just yet.
Back at the Guardian, Jackie Ashley wonders whether May might have ended up throwing in her lot with the Brexiters after all:
We are going into the huge Brexit experiment with the tiller of state tied fast in a single position, without proper parliamentary opposition and under a new leader who has only to look in one direction to maintain her position.
And for balance, in the FT former chancellor Nigel Lawson [paywall] reckons Brexit gives Britain the chance to finally finish the Thatcher revolution, arguing that article 50 should be triggered forthwith with no time wasted on a “a futile and wholly misguided attempt to secure a trade agreement” with the EU:
It is the benefit of intelligent deregulation, something that cannot be captured in any theoretical economic model but which we demonstrated in the 1980s, that offers the prospect of the greatest economic gain. And this is entirely in our own hands, and not a matter of negotiations with others. That is what we need to be focused on now.
Tweet of the week
Hugo Rifkind expertly sums up exactly where we stand two-and-a-bit months on, according to Her Majesty’s government:
So. Today we learned Brexit means Brexit, and will be successful, not unsuccessful, and will achieve difficult things, not not achieve them.
— Hugo Rifkind (@hugorifkind) August 31, 2016
