Under pressure from the fundamentalists, No 10 quickly denied reports of a ‘Swiss-style’ deal with the EU. But the mood music against Brexit is an irreversible trend
The head of the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) used his conference speech today to call for a tilt in immigration policy, to reflect the fact that the UK actively needs people to move here if we are ever to see a return to prosperity. There were rumours, meanwhile, of a “Swiss-style” deal between the UK and the EU, in which we would slowly reconverge with the single market, via harmonised regulations around food and agriculture.
The puzzle pieces are cohering into one picture: things are bad. Some people would like to continue arguing about root causes, arranging Brexit, Covid and the sheer fecklessness of modern Conservatism into an infinitely contestable hierarchy, but most people would just prefer things to be better. And the “how can things be better?” phase of the arc comes right before “any mistake that can be undone, let’s try to undo it”.
