Reforms won't be easy, but attitudes change when people feel they are being bullied

There won’t be a deal. The EU has overplayed its hand. Clocking the defeatism of Britain’s negotiators, its representatives made deliberately harsh and vindictive demands: a lengthy period of non-voting membership, the regulatory annexation of Northern Ireland and continuing EU control of Britain’s trade and tariffs. But the United Kingdom, thank God, is a parliamentary democracy. Our MPs are not about to accept the sort of terms that a victorious power dictates to a defeated adversary.

What will happen when, as seems certain, the Withdrawal Agreement is rejected? Some talk of a Norwegian-style association, others of a second referendum, but it is hard to see either thing happening. I favoured EFTA membership from the start. Had we pursued that option after the vote, we’d have spared ourselves a great deal of trouble. We’d have recovered our trade policy, left the common agricultural and fisheries policies and pulled out of most non-economic aspects of membership. Sadly, though, we have left it too late. What is now being mooted is not a Norway-style arrangement, but Norway plus the backstop (the very thing that makes the current deal unacceptable) and, incredibly, plus the customs union, which would mean that, unlike other EFTA countries, we’d be forbidden to strike trade deals.

As for a People’s Vote (what an obnoxious name, by the way – what was the last one, an aardvarks’ vote?) even if a majority could be mustered for it in the House of Commons, there is no mechanism to turn that majority into a referendum without the collaboration of the executive. Since this government has set its face against a second referendum, there would need to be a snap dissolution, which would require the support of two thirds of MPs. Good luck with that.

Instead of fantasising about what we might ideally have wanted, let’s focus on what’s on the table. It’s possible to imagine a slimmed-down version of the current text squeaking through. A UK government – presumably led by a different PM – might go back to Brussels following a parliamentary rejection of the agreement and seek to salvage its most uncontentious aspects, such as reciprocal rights for each other’s citizens.