Brexit: Trouvez la Femme

So now we know, for sure; definitely.

As on the previous Sunday, when I went to get a copy of the Mail to check on the context of remarks by Vince Cable, so yesterday I bought the Telegraph so that I could read exactly the piece attributed to Philip Hammond and Liam Fix. It was cited on the radio as representing the formation of a joint strategy for Brexit, and thus the conclusion of a cabinet spat that has been reported over this year's 'silly season' by much of the media.

It was a short piece, attributed to the two men [and doubtless accepted by them] but indubitably crafted in 10, Downing Street, and polished by party professionals. It represented what had generally been understood to be Mrs May's position ever since she made her sublimely idiotic remark that "Brexit means Brexit". Since it was coined, derived from 'Grexit' which meant the threatened departure of Greece from the eurozone, the term Brexit has simply meant "the departure of the United Kingdom from the European Union, in response to the referendum decision of 23 June 2016". Mrs May was asked how she interpreted the terms: did it mean withdrawal from the European Common Market and the Customs Union? Did it simply require departure from the political institutions only? What mix-and-match of possible options did she favour?

None of this has been clear: either in her much-cited 'Lancaster House Speech' early this year or in her disastrous election campaign. Nor has it been any clearer whether she favours a 'hard Brexit' [undefined] or some 'softer' version. Two things that do appear to be consistent in her few and often oblique remarks on the matter are:
1. Her proclaimed determination to reduce net immigration: the great 'failure' of her six year tenure of the Home Office which she apparently thinks she can achieve from Number Ten. If she does achieve it, she will alienate industry and commerce, the universities, and the immigrant communities from the Commonwealth who had seen a reduction in EU immigration to the UK as a chance for them to bring more friends and family members into the country.
2. Her equally definite declarations that there is no place in the UK post-Brexit for the European Court are equally likely to make for an extremely difficult negotiation with M Barnier on trade matters that should be straightforward.

Lewis Carroll, in one of the most brilliant satires on society, has a character declare that they can think of six impossible things before breakfast. Mrs May, without saying anything on those lines, has made it abundantly clear that she has one impossible thing on her mind all the time: the removal of the British economy from its European Economic Community context without significant damage to Gross National Product or to the standard of living of the mass of the nation.

It now appears that Fox and Hammond have accepted that they must both support this point of view, at least publicly and for time being. This is a consensus that cannot last. The crisis in British politics will continue: well done, David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Odious Osborne!