I see that the clever and resourceful Oliver Robbins, the leading UK civil servant in Brexit negotiations, has dug Mrs May out of another hole. Seemingly Mr Robbins organized a secret meeting between CEOs of some 10 top companies, some cabinet members and some others on the current state of negotiations. As a result when Mrs May suggested some days ago there was a third way, centred on technology and a free trade agreement, Robbins, armed with new information from his secret meeting, was in a position to discreetly tell her something like this, ‘No, Mrs May, there are only two options; ‘It is either a Norway-style deal (UK staying in the single market and accepting EU rules) or a free trade agreement, which businesses are completely against’. Any fudged solution will be a compromise between these two positions.
Mr Robbins knows full well that the strategy of Mrs May’s visits to all the European capitals was a diplomatic failure. Her mission had been to sweeten EU countries to use their influence against the EU negotiators in Brussels taking a hard line. It has obviously failed. So Mr Robbins was invited to address the cabinet and parliamentary members on the reality of the present stage of negotiations. One member is reported as saying when he left Mr. Robbins’ meeting, “I came out of the meeting and thought we were even more screwed than we were before”. Good luck Mr Robbins in Chequers on Friday next in trying to convince such Cabinet members as Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, David Davis, and Liam Fox, who are on a mission to return to some glorious distant past of free trade in British history, if it ever existed in the way some of these people say it did.
It’s a matter of sovereignty, not some glorious distant past.