WITH a Tory government in power, business ought to be content. Yet it is crotchety. In Theresa May’s first year in office, many businessfolk complained they were not getting a hearing. Access to the prime minister has improved since she lost her majority in last year’s election, but plenty say they are still not listened to.

This is especially true when it comes to Brexit, their biggest concern. Most recently the five biggest business lobbies joined forces to warn that slow progress in the talks in Brussels was forcing firms to plan for a worst-case outcome, losing the benefits of a transitional period after Britain leaves the European Union next March. Their letter followed a statement from Airbus that it might pull out of Britain in the event of a no-deal Brexit. Carmakers piled in, with BMW and Honda warning that leaving the EU’s customs union and single market would disrupt supply chains. A counter-blast from Brexiteers was notable for its dearth of business support.

Yet the response from some was still a raspberry. Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, called Airbus’s statement “inappropriate”. Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, reportedly said, “Fuck business,” a comment he barely softened by later suggesting his target was corporate lobbyists, not business itself. With open cabinet warfare over fiscal policy as well as Brexit, and Labour under far-left control, many companies feel no party now speaks for them.

The truth is more subtle. Business lobbying, especially over Brexit, is having an impact. Mrs May slapped down her ministers by insisting companies had every right to speak out. Greg Clark, the business secretary, and Philip Hammond, the chancellor (whose Treasury was dubbed the “beating heart of Remain” by Mr Johnson), are listening. Pressure from business groups to preserve frictionless trade by staying in a customs union is proving effective.

For it is becoming plain that hard Brexiteers in the cabinet are losing the fight. The logic of the “backstop” that Mrs May has accepted to avert a hard border in Ireland is that Britain will stay in a customs union and in regulatory alignment with the EU even after the transitional period that is meant to end in December 2020. Brussels knows this. EU leaders, who met for a summit on June 28th-29th, have been critical of Mrs May’s delay in setting out what she wants from Brexit. But their willingness to give her more time reflects the perception that she is softening her position.

On July 6th Mrs May will call her cabinet to Chequers, the prime minister’s country house, to thrash out the final details of a Brexit white paper due to be published on July 9th. Drafts are circulating around Whitehall. Insiders say its main proposal is likely to be in effect to remain in the EU’s single market for goods, but not for services. Combined with a customs union, this is sometimes known as the “Jersey” or “Isle of Man” option, as it is broadly the position of these islands today.

To placate Tory hardliners, the white paper may try to present the plan as a temporary one. That might keep alive the theoretical dream of regulatory divergence at an unspecified future date, as well as that of the “maximum facilitation” option that uses unspecified technology, not a customs union, to avoid border controls on the island of Ireland. Yet business leaders who recall the French aphorism that nothing lasts like the provisional will be reassured by the white paper.

Hard Brexiteers, however, will not be. In a nod to a recent cover of this newspaper, Mr Johnson has vociferously attacked what he calls a “bog-roll” Brexit that is “soft, yielding and seemingly infinitely long”. Several ministers believe the Jersey option crosses too many of Mrs May’s red lines. That it will not cover services, which make up 80% of Britain’s economy, worries some. Systems of mutual recognition or regulatory equivalence will not give service providers the same access to EU markets. And being in a single market for goods and a customs union will make it far harder to do trade deals with third countries.

Charles Grant of the Centre for European Reform, a think-tank, expects these considerations to trigger ministerial resignations this summer. Mr Johnson, who was this week ridiculed even by fellow Tories for flying to Afghanistan to avoid a vote on Heathrow airport (see article), may quit, now that his leadership hopes are going down the pan. So might Liam Fox, the trade secretary. Yet Mr Grant also notes the irony that, although losing hardliners like these may please Brussels, the EU is still likely to say no to Mrs May’s softer Brexit plans.

The sticking-point is free movement of labour. EU negotiators say letting Britain stay in the single market for goods without free movement would be unacceptable cherry-picking. Some of them think Mrs May can be pushed into further concessions, including big payments into the EU budget. They may be wrong. Mrs May’s political ability openly to breach her Brexit red lines must be limited.

Moreover, some in the EU see attractions in a goods-only option. An official in Berlin says that German businesses, keen to keep selling into the British market, would welcome it. Free movement can be blurred at the edges, as other countries have managed. A compromise could thus be found. And it would be hard Brexiteers, not businesspeople, in a four-letter fix.