EU leaders have torn apart the Chequers plan. A ‘no deal’ Brexit is now more likely than ever ‘It will not work.’

As far as Britain’s relations with the rest of Europe go, its preferred strategy of “divide and rule” is quite literally, older than the United Kingdom. It’s been the leading diplomatic approach of English government seeking to get their way since at least the time of Henry VIII. Back then, his political priority was to win support for what his courtiers euphemistically described as “the King’s Great Matter”, but you and I know better as his desperate attempts to have his marriage to Katherine of Aragon declared null and void so he could make babies with Anne Boleyn.

He tried to play the Holy Roman Empire off against the French and the Pope off against both. Civil servants and ministers were despatched on foreign policy trips to try and argue points of theology about why the Aragon marriage had, in fact, not taken place and each received the same firm response: jog on, sunshine.

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In the end, Henry VIII had to opt for a domestic solution: he got Parliament to declare that England was a sovereign nation with only God above it, and therefore that the King of England could decide religious matters in his own country. The votes in Parliament were bitterly contested – so close, in fact, that they had to introduce “divisions”, when MPs go to different sides of the building to indicate their support or opposition for a bill, as opposed to the pre-Tudor system of just having both sides yell yes or no and handing victory to the loudest shout. (MPs still holler before a division as a tribute to the practice.)

Theresa May’s Great Matter

But somehow, the gambit’s initial failure hasn’t dimmed its allure in Westminster. In fact, it’s one of the few approaches to doing politics than Theresa May shares with David Cameron.

‘The problem that European leaders have is that May wants, in their eyes, all the benefits but none of the costs of membership of the EU’

She has always clung to the idea that divide-and-rule might be the secret to negotiating the terms of her own Great Matter (she wants the United Kingdom’s marriage to the European Union declared null and void so we can make trade deals with the United States, while retaining an open border between Northern Ireland and Ireland), and the fantasy is one of the few ideas she still shares with most Conservative MPs. There has long been an idea that Michel Barnier, the man appointed to negotiate Brexit, needed to be worked around, and that the divided interests of France, Germany and Ireland would eventually come to the United Kingdom’s aid.

But the truth has always been that Barnier’s negotiating line comes not from his own head but the 27 nations of the European Union. In fact, a more sensible British government would have recognised early on that Barnier is their best friend in Brussels: no other European politician’s historical reputation will go up in smoke if the EU fails to reach an agreement with the United Kingdom, but Barnier’s will. But instead, they tried to go around him and appeal to member states directly.

Chequers is dead

Just as Henry VIII did, May discovered today that her divide-and-rule approach isn’t going to work – her fellow political leaders have joined with her own MPs in declaring her Brexit plan deader than disco. Donald Tusk said simply that the plan “will not work”.

Barnier’s tough lines on her Brexit strategy can’t be avoided by going direct to her fellow heads of government. Instead, they’ve been far more direct and far more brutal than Barnier ever has: they’ve declared that her proposed version of exit is unworkable and that it simply won’t do.

The problem that European leaders have is that May wants, in their eyes, all the benefits but none of the costs of membership of the European Union. They want her to pick either the benefits and the costs, or no costs and no benefits.

European leaders are calculating that like Henry, May has a parliamentary fallback: she can go to Westminster and accept the UK’s continuing membership of both the single market and the customs union. They believe that the damage of leaving without a deal is too great for British politicians to risk it.

But the problem is that the European leaders have got it wrong, too. Unlike Henry, May doesn’t have a stable parliamentary majority. There is no way that the Conservative Party will ever accept a version of Brexit in which we stay within the single market and customs union.

That means that the most likely outcome of the Brexit talks is no deal. Henry VIII’s failure at Europe forced him to trigger a revolution in English politics that we are still living with today. Jeremy Corbyn will hope that May’s failure has a similar ending.

Stephen Bush is special correspondent at the New Statesman