We're still no closer to a clear Brexit deal, but when one is agreed we should have another referendum

The British continue to fatally overestimate their bargaining power and underestimate, just as fatally, the malign immediate consequences of a chaotic hard Brexit

Michel Barnier has been very clear that the EU does not have to agree to any kind of deal (Reuters)

Foolish, costly and probably ruinous as Brexit will turn out to be, there are at least some points where the British side in the negotiations have the better of the argument (which is not the same as getting their way).

One is the need, urgently, to pick up the leisurely pace of the Brexit negotiations. Whoever’s fault it has been, more than a year after the EU referendum vote precisely nothing of substance has been settled. When the Brexit Secretary David Davis said over the weekend that the European Commission had downplayed the real achievements so far it was difficult to think of what he might be referring to. As Nick Clegg colourfully put it, it is as if Mr Davis and his team were surveying a messy building site but congratulating themselves because they’d managed to brew a pot of tea successfully.

The Irish border issue? Still no resolution. The “divorce bill”? If anything, the European end seems to be pushing its luck even harder – €100bn at the last count, while the British simply wave such figures away. The rights of EU and UK citizens? Probably some movement, because it is one of the less complex areas, and one where there is much goodwill, but, again, no concrete policy.

So, one week per month devoted to arguing these issues through is plainly not enough. For the sake of all concerned, the balance of time spent in this process has to move dramatically towards engagement. A monthly press conference were Mr Davis and the chief EU negotiator Michel Barnier politely abuse each other is not the answer to this crisis.

For once, at any rate, Mr David and the Prime Minister are right. The only pity is that even if the talks were run like some sort of 24/7 marathon diplomatic version of They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, it would not be possible to reconcile the irreconcilable – access to the single market without free movement of labour, for example. It would make some difference to the dynamic, true, because it would in effect reduce the EU’s advantage over the tight timetable; yet the fundamental imbalance in economic power still leaves the British in the position of supplicants. That is where they will remain.

In Britain, the chances of reversing Brexit seem to be receding, at least in the short term. Some of the most principled of pro-European Conservatives, such as the doughty Anna Soubry, have declared that they will vote for the so-called Great Repeal Bill and the other Brexit legislation.

Just as Article 50 was the external expression of the EU referendum vote last year, so is this legislation the internal parliamentary enactment of it, because it means the repeal of the 1972 European Communities Act. That was the measure that made a legal reality of the Treaty of Rome and our membership of the European Community – what seemed to be an abiding achievement of then-Conservative premier Edward Heath, a post-war turning point. Soon it will be binned.

Ms Soubry and others are talking about a Brexit consensus now, making the best of a bad job. Sir Keir Starmer, Labour’s Shadow Brexit Secretary, has successfully moved his party towards a much more practical transition policy retaining membership of the single market and the customs union – and possible for ever.

When Theresa May says that it is not possible to be a member of the single market without being in the European Union – which she has repeated again – she is plain wrong. Norway and the other old Efta members are not in the EU but they are in the single market. So could Britain be. Either Ms May is astonishingly ignorant about what is now relatively commonly understood or she is deceiving herself or the nation, or both. Maybe she is just tired. At any rate, it is not a sensible way to proceed. What seems to be gathering some pace, even within the Cabinet, is a definite move towards a longer, much more gradual Brexit than the “cliff edge” envisaged by the hard Brexiters. There is certainly no majority in the House of Commons for simply crashing out of the EU in March 2019.

Which is all very well, but brings us back to Michel Barnier. For he has been very clear that the EU does not necessarily have to agree to any kind of transition deal, nor indeed any post-EU trade deal, desirable as it might be for the British and for some European exporters to Britain. There is an assumption in the UK, Dunkirk-like, that at the last minute there will emerge some sort of deus ex machina, maybe in the stateswomanly shape of Angela Merkel, who will cut through the tangle of the talks and deliver the sort of deal the British have been asking for all along. Thus far, however, there is no evidence to support that view, and the British continue to overestimate, fatally, their bargaining power and underestimate, just as fatally, the malign immediate consequences of a chaotic hard Brexit. Such an outcome is far from impossible. Another, accidental and perverse, consensus, therefore, exists between Michel Barnier and the likes of Nigel Farage, who view a hard Brexit with the same apparent calm resignation.

In those circumstances, as the dread day approaches, no one ought to rule out having another referendum for the British people to be allowed the opportunity to vote positively for the new “deal”, whatever it is, or opt for the status quo. Perhaps in time that is one thing the various factions and parties in Parliament, especially the so-far silent House of Lords, could come to agree about.