Remainers, embrace Theresa May’s constructive ambiguity over the customs union – it might just keep us in it

It might not be so bad if what actually happens with regard to the customs union is more or less what we have already

The only thing worse for the country than the current PM would be the so-called Dream Team of imperial fantasists plotting to replace her (Reuters)

Let us be categorical. It is categorically important to be categorical! Britain will not remain in the customs union post-Brexit. On this, the Prime Minister has been clear. We are “categorically leaving the customs union”, Theresa May murmured into a handkerchief while refusing to meet anyone’s eye in China last week.

Why? Because it would make disgraced former Defence Secretary Liam Fox feel like less of an adult failure as he pretended to negotiate trade deals with the Chinese, is that good enough?

Alas, it wasn’t. On Sunday night, the Prime Minister clarified her position, using her usual method of whispering into a sock and handing it to a spokesperson: “It is not our policy to be in the customs union,” came the message. “It is not our policy to be in a customs union.”

So that’s categorical! Sighs of relief on the M20 coming out of Dover. We will not trash any definite arrangements we have in place with the European Union vis-a-vis tariffs, borders, etc. We will trash any indefinite arrangements – perhaps even the concept of arrangements itself?

But in case further clarification were needed, say on the Northern Irish border, No 10 was even more categorical today, pointing to two distinct post-Brexit trading options, as laid out in a document drafted by David Davis and Philip Hammond last August. One option is “a highly streamlined customs arrangement”. Another option is “a new customs partnership with the EU”. A “customs arrangement” is categorically not a “customs union”! But what it might involve, according that perplexing document, is a “time-limited customs union between the UK and EU Customs Union”. So, not the customs union, not a customs union, but some customs union. Unless you have any better ideas? “The government would particularly welcome views on ... whether [it] should consider any additional or alternative proposals”, concludes said document.

Theresa May is a Prime Minister. But is she the Prime Minister? She didn’t seem entirely welcome at her own home, when Davis met EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier at No 10 today. She doesn’t seem welcome anywhere. Remainers accuse her of “ideologically driven madness”. Leavers urge her to “get up off her knees!” Former supporters urge her to go.

But will she? They say that when you feel sorry for a politician, then they are doomed. But May is fortunate in this regard, in that there is something about her that congenitally repels sympathy. It might simply be that she is the leader of the most toxic organisation in Britain. But it might also be her freakish ability to say nothing at all (thus pleasing no one) while saying it in that patronising, irritated, hectoring, categorical way (thus allowing everyone to locate their own particular note of displeasure). It’s quantum doublespeak. She is the political embodiment of Samuel Beckett’s famous remark about art: “The expression that there is nothing to express, nothing with which to express, nothing from which to express, no power to express, no desire to express, together with the obligation to express.”

And it could be her greatest strength. She has been pushed into this latest act of self-sabotage by the laughable “Dream Team” of imperial fantasists: Boris Johnson, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Michael Gove. They have rebranded their favoured hard Brexit as “clean” Brexit, ie one unencumbered by any economic or diplomatic realities, but backed up by those sinister claims that the civil service is “biased against Brexit” (as anyone might be who was dealing with the reality of Brexit as opposed to selling the fantasy of Brexit). After declaring our judges to be “enemies of the people” for upholding British law and our politicians to be “traitors” for upholding British sovereignty, the next step in the despotic playbook was to accuse the civil service of bias. The next logical step will be to accuse the British people of treachery, then the beasts of the field, sea and air, then the trees and flowers, then the geological substructure of the British Isles, and so on.

But really, the neo-imperialists can only push their nonsense so far. They need May to be Prime Minister, because if she were to dissolve, either a Remainer would take charge (bad), or one of them would have to do it, and then the whole project would collapse because they are contemptuous fantasists with zero legitimacy (worse). And it might also serve the Remainer cause not to get too angry about May’s constructive ambiguity either. It might not be so bad if what actually happens with regard to the customs union is more or less what we have already, ie about as frictionless a free trade agreement as anyone could hope for.

So let the Dream Team have their meaningless flush of pride! That’s all Brexit is, really, isn’t it? A slice of cake for Boris, a pat on the head for Jacob, a gold star for Michael? Albeit at the expense of our collective wealth, health and sanity.