Brexit: there is a plan, but it’s secret…

What is the plan? Initially, the demands by broken-hearted Remainers for the publication of a plan on Brexit by Theresa May were mildly annoying, and then amusing because of their plaintive quality. Now, even a Leave voter like me can share some of the concern that nothing very much seems to be happening in public. Like all Leavers, I remain delighted with the referendum result, but the Prime Minister is pretty soon – any day now – going to have to give some indication of her preferred post-Brexit model. It is one thing for a Prime Minister saying nothing to adopt a submarine approach, it is quite another for her to mimic a nuclear submarine going dark under the Arctic circle for three months.

Is there a plan? As I understand it there is, but the people I asked told me they could not tell me exactly what it is. One official I ran into used a military metaphor: why would you show the enemy your battle plan? Not that the EU or journalists are the enemy, or anything like that. Of course not. Nonetheless, there is logic to the idea that it makes little sense to lay out a list of positions in public which can then be shot down.

That said, as much as I can discern it based on conversations in the last few weeks, the plan seems roughly to be as follows.

The ideal aim is what is loosely termed a “soft Brexit”, meaning some kind of trade-off with control of borders (allowing quotas and an emergency brake) and an agreement that ensures the continuation of mutually beneficial key trading arrangements, for the German car industry and the City as the centre of euro-denominated trading. A variation of the EEA seems to be the way to do it. As I explained yesterday, Britain is not a supplicant. The big losers from any attack on the City of London will be the fragile EU and the Eurozone, currently contemplating an explosion at Deutschebank and in Italy’s banking sector.

But simultaneously the UK government is, sensibly, preparing for the shock of a hard Brexit taking place against a backdrop of EU decay, or even in extreme circumstances disintegration. That means arming the Bank of England (figuratively, not literally), getting the Treasury ready and preparing discretely for what will be a tricky process.

Much of the political chatter is too UK-centric. The great complication at the centre of the delay is the disintegrating political scene in the EU, which makes negotiation extremely difficult. The migration crisis, the rebellion of Hungary and its allies, and the banking problem, are creating a dangerous populist cocktail. Most of all, next year is an election year in France and Germany. France chooses its President in two rounds in April and May 2017, and the German federal elections are expected to be held in September or October next year. Mrs Merkel may not make it.

Hence Number 10’s annoyance on Boris’s declaration that Article 50 should be triggered early in 2017. Brexiteers may be anxious to get on with it, but there might be sense in waiting until the UK knows exactly who is going to be in the Élysée Palace and the Bundeskanzleramt. Quite a lot may also happen to the rackety EU in the next six to twelve months.

I will report back, after further conversations, when I know more…