What happens if Brexit and Canada Plus turn out to be absolutely fine?

The loudest criticism since Theresa May and the Commission did a deal last week on phase one of Brexit has come from those on the pro-Brexit side who say that – in the Scottish phrase – “the jerseys have been sold” and from extremist Remainers who seem furious, while pretending not to be, that any progress has been made.

Meanwhile, back on planet earth, the UK and the EU have fudged the Irish border question and come up with a sensible compromise on the the rights of EU citizens. The role of the ECJ will be phased out effectively in relation to EU citizens over eight years, which is hardly dreadful. The UK increased its offer on money, but not by as much as the EU wanted in the summer. After the high drama of last week, relieved Tory MPs gave May a warm reception when she briefed MPs in the Commons on Monday afternoon. The row about whether phase one is “legally binding” (ridiculous Brits, howled the ultra-Remainers) fell apart when the EU confirmed that no, the UK government is right to say that the phase one deal is not legally binding until further agreement is reached. The payments and so on depend on more progress. Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.

Now the UK and the EU move forward to phase two, and a discussion of the transition period which will be very much like being in the EU for two years, minus MEPs. They will then – hopefully – line up a future trading relationship which can be signed once the UK is a third country, that is to say not in the EU.

For that reason, this week everyone interested in Brexit is talking about CETA. Some people have even read it.

CETA, the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, is the recently agreed free trade agreement between the EU and Canada that could provide the model for a Brexit deal if some sections are adapted and others dropped. Contrary to some claims, it does contain a section on services, although on financial services the UK and the EU will need a closer arrangement to ensure that the eurozone (which is powered out of London) continues to have access to the City for all its needs.

The demand for regulatory alignment, the new terror of hardline Brexiteers, looks problematic in some areas such as agriculture, but in plenty of other areas such as car manufacturing it is wired in via international standards. Is there seriously scope for the successful UK car industry to diverge much from safety and regulation provisions as stipulated by the EU? Er… no.

With CETA in vogue, one early advocate of such a solution, Tory MEP David Campbell-Bannerman, has written a useful guide to what Super Canada, or a Canada Plus, would look like. On rules about data, the UK and the EU will likely have to go further, and agriculture may be difficult to align, but CETA demonstrates that it is perfectly possible for grownups to agree when there is the will.

There are many miles to go and much argument to come. Still, the direction of travel seems to be Canada Plus.

If you are a hardline purist Brexiteer you are probably suspicious about all this CETA talk. While you like the general sound of Canada (Commonwealth, the nicest people, the Monty Python Lumberjack sketch) don’t the Canadians have to agree to too much “regulatory alignment”? Can’t we have zero regulatory alignment?

It does not look like it, no. Anyway, somehow the Canadians managed to agree CETA with the EU while maintaining NAFTA with the US when such an arrangement, combining the EU and the United States, is said by almost everyone pro-Brussels to be about as incompatible as John Knox and the Pope. On the contrary, Canada seems to be fine.

If you are a hardline Remainer you are unlikely to like all this CETA talk either. For goodness sake, it implies Brexit might actually happen. And Canada is a long distance away, and any agreement with Commonwealth connotations is obviously a bit racist, imperialist and backward looking in some way you feel deep down but cannot quite articulate without coming over like AC Grayling, Britain’s most fanatical Remainer after Alastair Campbell.

For everyone else, such a deal in 2019, or a while later, would mean the UK ends up leaving the EU, controlling its borders, making our own laws away from the ECJ and not having MEPs. Hurrah, if you voted to leave. If you were for Remain but accept the result, such a deal maintains close links between neighbours based on a sensible agreement to co-operate, with the added enjoyment of seeing Nigel Farage even more furious than usual.

This prospect of a terrifically reasonable outcome is rather good news after all the shouting. That being the case it has set off both groups of unhappy hardliners, again.

The government has sold out Brexit, according to the hardest Brexiteers who have been itching for a chance to switch to the betrayal stage of their narrative, the November 1918 stab in the back theory. Pursuing purity is much easier than applying the brain to the difficult business of delivering Brexit in a way that is not needlessly harmful and not any more divisive in the country than it already is.

Equally, the Stop Brexit, Continuity Remain crowd says that – damn it – there is progress but we’ll never get phase two agreed. This from the same people who were convinced we useless, hopeless, stupid, feckless British were never going to get phase one agreed with the mighty Brussels, remember. They seem absolutely furious to be denied a complete collapse of the talks, because it was their best chance of forcing a referendum re-run.

The progress has left the Stop Brexit types in a weird position that will look ever more weird if Brexit happens and it is not the disaster – the economic meltdown followed by implosion akin to the Black Death crossed with Stalingrad – that they have been predicting since the referendum. They seek vindication and to get it require failure or a terrible recession to hit the country. Some are even so high on ultra-liberal “tolerance” that they fantasise about the deaths of older Britons, which is lovely.

It is increasingly bizarre to watch it play out, and all to save British membership of a set of rickety political arrangements. The European Union in its Maastricht incarnation is only 25 years-old, and was never beloved by the British.

Thankfully, it looks as though last week’s agreement, if it leads to a final deal, will turn out to be an unmitigated disaster for both of those extreme positions. When both the hardest Brexiteers and the ultra-Remainers sworn to stop Brexit are unhappy with such a deal, then everyone else should be pleased. It will not be perfect, but it can be okay. Not a fantastical imagining of a constitutionally pure past, but not a bananas future either in which the British beg to be let back in to the European Parliament because we all miss MEPs and their lavish expenses so much.

The central reality remains what it was a year or so after the referendum, when assorted pollsters tested opinion. The UK was split, but not into two sides of equal size. The overwhelming majority of voters, around two thirds it seems, either want Brexit to happen or accept it will.

If Canada Plus does turn out to be perfectly manageable, and life trundles on, there will be embarrassment down the line when predictions and promises are measured against reality. Although it was never going to be either utopia or Armageddon, the two extreme wings of the rival sides have fought as though that was the choice.

This led the Brexiteers to over-promise during the referendum, with a claim that has dogged them ever since. The Vote Leave £350m for the NHS figure was bogus, and plenty of people said so at the time. Ultra-Remainers risk looking silly too. They are like prophets who have worn out many sandwich boards predicting that the end of the world is nigh. What happens when the sun still rises the next day?

During Brexit, all manner of developments could lead to a serious economic reverse in Britain, such as the impact of a blow up in China’s shadow banking system, or a bursting of the US equities and bond bubbles, or a re-run of the eurozone crisis, or a conflict over North Korea next year, or, in Britain, the election of a far-left government run by Marxists posing as kindly grandpas. With such momentous possibilities, it seems unlikely that a Canada Plus deal – with around 80% of the UK economy  domestic anyway – represents the end of the world for Britain. It can be absolutely fine, and possibly much better, depending on the choices we make on economic policy, on developing the life sciences and fintech hubs that promise so much prosperity‎, and delivering improvements for the parts of Britain that feel left behind.