Any deal will be a tradeoff between wealth and sovereignty – the proportion and timescale are the only considerations
There is one Brexit deal. There has only ever been one. It has been there from the start, although hard to see through the fog. Its outline has been discernible behind plumes of rhetoric and misinformation billowing out from the Westminster political machine. It was there on the horizon the morning after the referendum. It has not moved during the thousands of hours of debate that followed.
The deal was already contained in article 50. It was in every bill in every late-night Commons vote. It was in Theresa May’s backstop and Boris Johnson’s alternative. It is the hard kernel of a soft Brexit and the soft underbelly of a hard one. It is the capital of Norwegian, Canadian and Australian-style Brexits. It is this: the UK will give up wealth in exchange for sovereignty.
