British Prime Minister Theresa May and Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond | Photo by Toby Melville/WPA Pool via Getty Images How Britain will negotiate Brexit Despite criticism for lacking a Brexit plan, Theresa May’s government has given plenty of clues about its strategy.

LONDON — What will Brexit look like? It’s the question that has dominated the latter half of 2016 and will loom over everything that happens in Westminster in the coming year.

While U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May has come in for sustained criticism for lacking clarity on Britain’s negotiating strategy, as the year draws to a close and we stare into the mists of 2017, the outline of the U.K’s plan is becoming sharper: “Take back control” of immigration, leave the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice, cut the amount of British taxpayer money going to Brussels and free Britain to strike new trade deals.

These four points, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said earlier in December, represent “an absolute wealth of information about what Brexit will look like.”

“You don’t have to be a brilliant international lawyer to deduce from those things more or less how it will work,” he told the Peston on Sunday program on December 4.

Taking him at his word, we've mined the most recent public pronouncements from those shaping the government's position on Brexit. This is how London sees Brexit playing out:

The timetable

When Michel Barnier, the European Commission’s chief Brexit negotiator, said he expected Brexit to be negotiated within 18 months of Article 50 being triggered in March 2017, it was assumed he had taken Downing Street by surprise. But both May and her Brexit Secretary David Davis, have broadly accepted that timetable. May envisions both the divorce settlement and the future trading arrangements being settled in parallel. “It could be as little as 18 months,” she told the House of Commons liaison committee on December 20, also citing the need for the matter to be settled ahead of the 2019 European elections.

Davis agrees. “It is all negotiable in that time,” he told the House of Commons Brexit committee on December 14.

So, the U.K. as well as the EU want a deal done by October 2018, ready for a Brexit D-Day at the end of the two-year Article 50 process: March 2019.

A transitional arrangement

A breathing space between the U.K’s current status as an EU member and its new relationship with the bloc is something that “businesses, regulators and thoughtful politicians, [and] civil servants on both sides of the English Channel” all want, Chancellor Philip Hammond told the British parliament's treasury committee on December 12.

May agrees with him: “There will of course be a necessity for adjustment to those new arrangements, for implementation of some practical changes that may need to take place in relation to that,” the prime minister told another parliamentary committee on December 20.

London is clear. The interim is not a time to endlessly thrash out the fundamentals of the U.K’s new relationship with the EU after the divorce. They want a new deal in place by October 2018. The transitional period, however long it might be, is merely a practical necessity; a countdown to the new deal, not a stalling strategy.

The transition will allow time for government, business and regulators to “adjust IT systems, and other simple, practical matters like that,” as May told MPs, or “a bridge” as Davis sees it: “If you build a bridge, you need to have both sides established before you build it.”

Freedom of movement will end

This is May’s red line. She believes the June 23 EU referendum was a “very clear message … that people wanted us to take control of our borders and control of immigration from the EU, as well as from countries outside the European Union,” as she told MPs on December 20. She has invested far too much political capital in her pledge to "take back control." Freedom of movement from the EU to the U.K. will end, come what may.

However, there is flexibility on the wider question of EU immigration. In an exchange with Labour’s Yvette Cooper during the December 20 hearing, she repeatedly declined to give a target for how far immigration from the EU should fall, from its current level of 189,000 a year, nor to explicitly say it should fall at all. It is only "control" that she has committed to. That leaves open the prospect of a potentially generous visa deal for EU migrants.

Hammond, as far back as October, gave an outline of what this might look like, telling the House of Commons treasury committee that voters’ concerns centered on migrants seeking “entry-level jobs” and that he could not “conceive of any circumstances” in which “highly qualified, highly skilled people” would be denied a place at a U.K. business under the new restrictions.

Out of the single market

The political imperative to end freedom of movement of people means that Britain’s membership of the single market, and its full access to it, must also lapse. Jean-Claude Juncker, Donald Tusk and Angela Merkel have all been clear: The single market is a rules-based entity. They will not let the U.K. drop one of the key rules while holding onto the same benefits.

May has also made it crystal clear that Britain is leaving the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice. Single market members must abide by its rules — so the U.K. is out.

But the U.K. is a major EU trading partner, and a total trade divorce would be extremely damaging to European businesses. A new trade deal with Britain — possibly along the lines of the EU-Canada deal — will be the U.K.'s preferred option.

Maybe budget contributions, maybe not

To sweeten any deal allowing the U.K. some form of single market access — and London will push hard for access for its financial services — ministers have made clear they are willing to listen to proposals that might see Britain make continued payments into the EU budget. “Of course we will consider it,” Davis said on December 1 in the House of Commons, but only if it is the way to secure “the best possible access for goods and services to the European market.”

If such a deal is reached, the amount paid in will not be anywhere near the £8.5 billion net contribution the U.K. currently makes a year (based on 2015 figures). Conservative Euroskeptic MPs would not stand for that. Any contribution would also have to be "sellable" to them and to the British public as a voluntary payment that brings obvious benefits to the U.K. economy. Otherwise the Leave campaign's pledge to “take back control” of the money, articulated by Johnson and Davis, will ring hollow.

One foot in the customs union

By setting up a Department for International Trade as one of her first acts as prime minister, May appeared to be indicating that Britain will leave the EU customs union, which blocks member countries from negotiating bilateral trade deals with third countries. Since then, a softer approach has been signaled.

There are “at least four” different options on the table for the U.K., Davis told the Brexit committee on December 14. These include the Turkish model of keeping some parts of the economy inside the customs union and some out, and the Swiss model, outside the union but with special customs arrangements.

Even Trade Secretary Liam Fox, on the Andrew Marr Show on December 18, cited the importance of “continuity” in terms of trade. Fox’s department is also actively seeking to hang on to EU trading conditions with around 30 non-EU countries after Brexit. Staying in the customs union would make that much easier and would also free the U.K. from the burden of the rules of origin checks on its future exports to the EU.

May herself has repeatedly said the customs union question is not binary. On this one, expect a compromise and continued membership of some form or another.