What was sketched out yesterday, boiled down to essentials, sounds a lot like his Canada Plus Plus Plus. But no decision yet it seems on the Customs Union.
Also: Scottish Tory MPs break ranks for clean Brexit; Welsh Conservatives demand Jones publishes leak inquiry; Smith attacks Murrison over loyalist’s invitation; and more.
If there’s to be no border in Ireland, and Britain is to leave the Customs Union and Single Market, it follows that there must be a customs border on the Irish Sea.
For all its compromises and ambiguities, it is the only practicable means to hand of giving the province something approaching normalcy.
“If the priority becomes avoiding new cooperation with a country outside the EU, then this will have damaging real world consequences for the security of all our people.”
Even if the DUP and Sinn Fein could persuade their communities to back the compromises necessary, they have not done so.
Also: SNP’s deputy leadership contest reveals splits over Europe and ‘Indyref2’; and Jones demands ‘soft border’ between Irish and Welsh ports post-Brexit.
It does not stipulate that an invisible border with the Republic trumps the integrity of the United Kingdom.
Afua Hirsch recounts her inability, as a person of mixed race, to feel she truly belongs in either Britain or Ghana.
Also: Tension in Welsh Labour as Sargeant’s son wins Assembly by-election; and Robertson resigns and triggers SNP deputy leadership election.
We are likely to get a deal with something for everyone – a ‘softish’ Brexit with May-style immigration controls. But the longer-term offers great opportunities.
Also: Bradley admits that she is obliged to call an Ulster election (but won’t say when); Tories attack SNP’s ‘double-dip’ tax hike; and more.
Also: May wades into Scottish flag row; Liberal Democrat accused of costing taxpayers thousands to prop up Jones; and DUP dismiss legal threat to £1 billion deal.
Even Whitehall’s fiercest advocates of the need to stay as close as possible to the EU recognise that there are risks in being a rule-taker not a rule-maker.
The Brexit negotiations and the lack of an obvious successor are likely to keep her in place at least until we leave the EU in March 2019.