Theresa May has given up on a central plank of her Brexit policy less than a week into Article 50, writes Ian Dent.

Not long ago, the prime minister was warned that she had no chance of sorting out the European divorce settlement, a transitional arrangement and a final trade deal in two years. She ignored those concerns.

“I want us to have reached an agreement about our future partnership by the time the two-year Article 50 process has concluded,” she made clear in her Lancaster House speech.

But today the message is rather different. The prime minister has admitted it cannot be done.

The prime minister is going to spend the whole of the next two years battling about money and the EU citizen residency issue.

She will hopefully also find time to negotiate transitional arrangements, although these seem ever-more likely to be a simple ‘grandfathering’ of existing rights and responsibilities, probably including free movement and European Court of Justice jurisdiction.

And then, finally, at the end of it all, she will come back with a sheet of A4 saying the Europeans want tariff-free, frictionless trade and so do we.

That’s what the Commons will vote on and what the British public will be expected to base their judgement on when going to the polls in 2020. After all that work, we’ll be hardly any further than we are now.

The Brexit government’s confidence about the rigid two-year timetable didn’t even survive a week’s contact with the enemy.

Already, they are capitulating to EU demands, as they were warned would happen unless they formulated a more realistic strategy.

 

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