Selling the Chequers plan

THERESA MAY could be forgiven for seeing next week’s trip to Salzburg to meet her fellow EU leaders as a welcome break from continual harassment at home. Her plan for Brexit, announced at Chequers, her country retreat, in July, is under attack from all sides (see article). Hardline Brexiteers hate the idea of keeping in close alignment with EU regulations so as to preserve frictionless trade in goods. Remainers dislike the plan’s omission of services, which are Britain’s most competitive sector. This week there was even wild talk among some Tory MPs of ousting Mrs May as party leader. In today’s febrile political climate, the chances of getting a Chequers-like plan through Parliament seem alarmingly small.

Alas the EU may not offer the prime minister much succour. Reports that it is softening its objections to Chequers are premature. It regards the proposal to use a customs arrangement to avoid a hard border in Ireland as complex and unworkable. It believes that allowing Britain to stay in the single market for goods but not services would undermine the market’s integrity. Its mantra is that Britain can have a Canada-style free-trade deal or full membership of the single market with full obligations like Norway—but nothing in between. Its hope is that, with time running out, its bullheadedness will push Mrs May into making more concessions, even to the extent of accepting free movement of people.

Such intransigence is a mistake. Chequers certainly has flaws that will need fixing in further negotiations. It could yet evolve into something closer to Norway plus a customs union. But even as it stands, Mrs May’s plan is a big shift by the government towards accepting the EU’s principal demand—that a post-Brexit Britain should abide by most single-market rules, including, in effect, the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice. It offers a way to avert a border between Northern Ireland and the Irish republic that a Canada-type agreement on its own does not. And the promise to maintain a level playing-field for competition answers one of Brussels’s biggest fears, of a race to the bottom in standards.

Though including services would be beneficial, membership of the single market for goods alone is hardly heresy. Most free-trade deals cover goods, not services. Moreover, Switzerland and the Channel Islands are in effect members of the EU’s single market for goods alone. Brussels may hate these precedents, but it cannot deny their existence.

As for free movement of people, there is no economic logic arguing that this is needed for a single market. In practice several countries restrict it. The Swiss offer jobs to their nationals first. The Belgians throw out migrants who cannot find work. Liechtenstein has quotas for how many EU nationals it admits. There should be scope for compromise, the more so since the numbers coming to Britain from the EU have fallen sharply.

The only game in town

Chequers has enemies everywhere, yet it is the only serious proposal on the table. Even at home, Brexiteers who are campaigning to sink the scheme have failed to come up with a coherent alternative plan or any credible way to avoid a hard border in Ireland.

The EU’s leaders may reckon that, since the Chequers plan’s unpopularity in Mrs May’s party makes it unlikely to pass muster, they have little to lose by rubbishing it. But doing so too aggressively could make it harder for any Brexit deal at all to be agreed on. The risk of then getting a new hardline Tory prime minister set on a no-deal Brexit is surely worse than Chequers, especially as Mrs May’s plan can evolve further. Given this, Europe’s leaders should be ready to bend a little more now.