May doesn’t have the majority to push it through at home, and there’s little in it to win backing from abroad

Think of the government’s Brexit white paper as a freeze-frame rather than the whole movie. An extremely important frame, certainly, but there are plenty more action shots to come before the Brexit credits can finally roll, if they ever do.

The 98-page document does capture the moment when the government finally and formally admitted to the British public that our future relationship with the EU is supremely vital to the nation’s economy, prosperity and security. So vital, in fact, that it must take priority over all the unilateralist fantasies about what Brexit might have involved.

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It’s the moment when the government said a no-deal Brexit would be a disaster, when it pulled the plug on the bilateral trade deal with America and when it put its responsibilities in Ireland above Brexit at-any-price. And it’s the moment when it said that, whether you are a leaver or a remainer, you just have to accept that Britain’s national interests cannot be separated from close and strong relations with Europe.

However the white paper – which was adopted at Chequers a week ago – is also a glimpse of a plan of engagement before the real action begins. Like a wartime battle-plan, it won’t survive engagement with the enemy – or in this case with Michel Barnier and the European commission negotiators. Nor will it be unscathed by the Brexiter resistance forces on the Conservative backbenches, who sometimes give the impression that any compromise with the EU is nothing less than treason.

Politically, the white paper is constructed with these sceptics very much in mind. Theresa May’s introduction starts by saying that Britain is leaving the EU and that she is delivering Brexit. The new Brexit secretary, Dominic Raab, made the same point at the start of a stormy session in the Commons on Thursday.



But the white paper is not the Brexit treaty. In spite of all the pain, the rows and the resignations, the white paper is merely the government’s version of what a Brexit treaty should contain. The document barely admits the fundamental practical reality that almost everything within it now has to be negotiated with the EU. There enormous gaps between the UK and EU positions on most of the issues in the document and every attempt to bridge those gaps may also trigger fresh revolts and accusations.



The key elements have been known for the last week. They include the so-called facilitated customs arrangement which is designed to avoid a hard border in Ireland or with the EU more widely, the proposed “common rule book” and “free trade area” (these phrases are designed to avoid mention of the single market) in goods and agri-foods alongside separate regimes for services.

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However, although May has lobbied hard for European leaders not to dismiss these and many other proposals, the reality is that these ideas will not fly with the EU. The commission and, formally at least, the EU27 regard the single market as an indivisible project, and there is no sign that the UK will be permitted to cherry-pick either the sectors or the rules it likes best. The customs plan, which still claims that the UK will collect EU tariffs even while levying differential tariffs of our own, has no practical attractions to Brussels either.

Then there are the things that the white paper deliberately blurs. There is little mention of the near-certainty that the UK would have to pay the EU for the market access it seeks, let alone of the price tag. The issue of the European court of justice, neuralgic for so many Tory leavers, is left vague. Issues over migration and the movement of people – at the core of the referendum campaign and stirred up again by Donald Trump in Brussels on Thursday – are not clearly set out either. All of these issues would have to be brought into sharp focus if they are to form part of an agreement.

May has her redrawn cabinet onside now, as well as many of the Tory remainer rebels. But who else? Not Labour. Not the other opposition parties. Every Tory leaver MP who threatens to vote against this package – and a lot of them spoke in the Commons chamber on Thursday – exposes the political reality that the prime minister does not have a majority in parliament for this white paper. If she can’t even carry the day at Westminster, she certainly won’t do so in Brussels.