Business group fails to get May to open up other than allusion to transitional deal, and Boris gets slapped down by EU ministers

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The big picture

Everyone wants to know. As the government continues to insist its plan is to secure the “best possible deal for Britain” – but refuses to say what that might be exactly, or how it intends to get it – questions about the prime minister’s Brexit strategy, and doubts as to whether she has one, are piling up.

The new president of the CBI, Paul Drechsler, told its annual conference on Monday that business was not looking for a “running commentary”, but that it really, really did need “clarity and – above all – a plan” on Brexit:

Businesses are inevitably considering the cliff-edge scenario – a sudden and overnight transformation in trading conditions. If this happens, firms could find themselves stranded in a regulatory no man’s land.

Outlining a new, post-Brexit industrial strategy to the conference (and a pledge to deliver “the lowest corporate tax rate in the G20”), Theresa May said in response it was right not to “rush ahead without doing the ground work”, and better to “take the time to get our negotiating position clear before we proceed”.

She also promised that where she could “set out our plans without prejudicing the negotiation”, she would. But she didn’t, of course – beyond hinting at the possibility of a transitional agreement that would allow businesses “to know with some certainty how things are going to go forward”.

May’s repeated insistence that her top priorities will be controlling EU migration and removing the UK from the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice, however, still seem to rule out continued tariff-free access to the single market – even though the government continues to say it wants both.

Cue mounting frustration, at home and on the continent. After Boris Johnson told a Czech newspaper in colourful terms (the word “bollocks” was uttered) that Britain would “probably” be leaving the customs union but would also seek free EU trade and immigration controls, the Dutch finance minister, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, was particularly frank:

He’s offering the British people options that are really not available ... He’s saying things that are intellectually impossible and politically unavailable. He’s not offering the British people a fair view of what can be achieved in these negotiations.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Italy economics minister Carlo Calenda was angered by Boris Johnson bringing prosecco sales into the EU arguments. Photograph: Bloomberg via Getty Images

An Italian economics minister, Carlo Calenda, was equally irked, saying it was simply “insulting” for Johnson to keep banging on about Italy’s prosecco sales in the UK and the government needed to get its act together:

Somebody needs to tell us something and it needs to be something that makes sense. You can’t say it’s sensible to say we want access to the single market, but no free circulation of people ... There’s lots of chaos and we don’t understand what the position is. The British government needs to sit down and put its cards on the table.

Some of this, of course, may have been provoked by Johnson’s unusual approach to diplomacy. But dissatisfaction with the government’s approach is not confined to continental capitals. Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour opposition leader, had a go, too, last week:

Isn’t the truth that the government is making a total shambles of Brexit, and nobody understands what her strategy actually is?

Only adding to the general impression of Brexit-related chaos are reports that both government and civil service risk being overwhelmed by the almost unimaginable scale of the task and bitter strategy disagreements.

A private memo by a Deloitte consultant painted a dismal picture of a Whitehall sinking beneath the workload and the “lack of a common strategy” among cabinet ministers, with departments working on more than 500 Brexit projects and possibly needing to hire 3,000 more civil servants.

Meanwhile Dave Penman, head of the civil service union FDA, said unpacking 40 years of EU membership was “the single biggest task facing the civil service since the second world war” – and warned the government against trying to do it “on the cheap”.

The view from Europe

Days before Angela Merkel announced her intention to stand for a fourth term as Germany’s chancellor – and refused point blank to discuss Brexit with Theresa May during the prime minister’s brief visit to Berlin – her finance minister was rather more forthcoming (and forthright).

Facebook Twitter Pinterest German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble said the UK would face EU budget bills for more than a decade after Brexit. Photograph: Gregor Fischer/AFP/Getty Images

Wolfgang Schäuble said in an interview with the Financial Times that the UK would face EU budget bills for more than a decade after Brexit, perhaps up to 2030, and that this time the EU would no longer be in a position to guarantee “generous rebates”.

Following the controversial government promises to Japanese carmaker Nissan that induced it to stay in Britain, Schäuble added that even outside the EU the UK will have to follow international G20 rules on investment incentives that would limit its ability to offer tax breaks.

And he repeated the now well-worn assertion that there could be no special deal on free movement and the single market, and that this could have consequences for the City:

There is no à la carte menu. There is only the whole menu or none. Without membership of the internal market, without acceptance of the four basic freedoms, there can of course be no passporting, no free access for financial products or for financial actors.

Merkel herself reiterated the same point on free movement, in a speech to the German employers’ association that was widely misinterpreted in pro-Brexit newspapers. She said there may be scope to discuss ways to restrict benefits for new EU migrants, but stressed once again:

Were we to make an exception for the free movement of people with Britain, this would mean we would endanger the principles of the whole internal market.

Meanwhile, back in Westminster

Away from the sea of raised business leaders’ eyebrows at the CBI as May and her Conservative government continued to stonewall on Brexit plans, the other two main Westminster parties also performed to type: more cunning Lib Dem plans to derail article 50; and carefully-managed confusion within Labour.

Further burnishing their credentials as the only one of the three main parties to dare to challenge what politicians are obliged to refer to now as “the will of the people” following the referendum, the latest Lib Dem scheme is to oblige May to outline her negotiating position before she is allowed to trigger article 50.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest John McDonnell described Brexit as an ‘enormous opportunity’. Photograph: Daniel Leal-Olivas/PA

This would involve Lib Dem peers seeking to insert extra clauses into a tightly-worded Brexit bill of the sort apparently being planned by the government in case it loses next month’s supreme court case over having to consult parliament before it can formally start the EU divorce proceedings.

For Labour, such a one-track policy view is less of an option. Some details of Labour’s stance have begun to gradually emerge – but they have generally brought as many questions as answers.

Despite having pledged to back article 50 come what may, the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, said the party would be able to put pressure on the government on Brexit terms by exerting “moral pressure”.

This followed a speech in which he called Brexit an “enormous opportunity”, alarming some colleagues, particularly shadow Brexit secretary Keir Starmer. His arrival was seen as a sign of renewed Labour unity, but Corbyn allies say he is now being “man marked” in the job over fears he could use it to launch a later bid to become leader.

The Labour Brexit truce might be eroding.

You should also know:

Read these:

In the London Review of Books, Neal Ascherson is savage on May and the government’s Brexit chaos:

Nothing in British history resembles this spectacle of men and women ramming through policies everyone knows they don’t believe in ... This is a government that stamps and shouts in order to hide its inner weakness, led by a politician whose show of flinty determination conceals – I increasingly suspect – something close to panic as she leads Britain into the black cloud of unknowing that covers Brexit negotiations.

In the Guardian, Rabbi Julia Neuberger writes movingly of her decision to apply for a German passport after the Brexit vote, affirming her continental roots:

It is to do with my origins, my admiration for how today’s Germany has dealt with its past, and my sense of being European as well as British.

Martin Kettle is pitiless on Boris Johnson’s crass approach to EU diplomacy, describing his remarks as patronising, insulting, infantile and stupid:

Brexit would be difficult enough even with Canning or Talleyrand as foreign secretary. But Johnson’s flippancy threatens to make it impossible. He is doing real damage. British voters did something on 23 June that others see as immensely and irredeemably destructive, and we have sent a narcissist to tell the world what we stand for.

And Rafael Behr wonders, along with many others (see above), whether the prime minister’s “enigmatic confidence” does not increasingly call to mind the emperor’s new clothes:

She hired the Brexit tailors, who promised an outfit spun from a new luxuriant cloth with magical properties visible only to those with the political discernment to appreciate it. She comports herself with gravitas, anticipating the moment when this fabulous attire can be paraded. But, already, doubting voices rise from the crowd. Already people are impatient to know the cut and pattern of the suit. And the fear grows that the prime minister, oblivious to impending ridicule, will lead Britain, naked, into a dangerous world.

Tweet of the week

Wouldn’t it be nice.