It’s decision day in the Brexit talks. Again.
The Brexit inner Cabinet will meet to hammer out not its final position, but the shape of its negotiating position. The expected result: an agreement on an end state in which the United Kingdom agrees it will follow EU regulations as it were still a member, for example on aviation; will agree to follow EU objectives but go about them in its own way, for example on recycling, where the British government wants to do more on plastic and less on glass; and finally, in some areas, it will go its way completely, for instance on financial services. Or as it has come to be known in Whitehall, the “three baskets” approach.
For all the lengthy run-up, this bit isn’t expected to be difficult: the joy of the three baskets idea is that everyone gets to tell themselves that it will be their basket that ends up the fullest. There are two difficulties: the first is that the EU27 won’t play ball, and the second is that MPs will kick off when it emerges that their preferred basket is essentially empty.
The objections of the EU27 are perhaps somewhat overwritten. The demands of keeping the Irish border open, maintaining Europol and EU-wide defence operations means that in a large number of areas, a very close regulatory and political relationship is in everyone’s interests. But everyone knows that in order for the Conservative government to actually sign the thing, there is going to have to be some divergence somewhere.
The bigger problem is what happens here at home when it turns out that the third basket – that is to say, full regulatory autonomy – is confined to fishing and the “industries of the future”. The European Research Group may have a few more letters left to send yet.
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