Theresa May's celebration of Ceta is telling of the type of Brexit we are heading toward

A Ceta type deal is exactly what some of her colleagues would like to sign with the EU. Gone are the human rights, environmental protections and free movement provisions of EU membership

Campaigners in the EU and Canada have relentlessly opposed CETA (Reuters)

Tomorrow the EU-Canada trade deal known as Ceta comes into effect. At least parts of it do. It’s the smallest and bitterest of victories for the EU’s trade commission, but proponents of these corporate-led trade deals must take their victories where they can get them nowadays.

EU trade policy has been thoroughly undermined over the last three years by the concerted campaigns of European citizens who want to transform the rules of global trade. They’ve made significant progress and EU trade policy will have to change.

On the other hand, Theresa May seems to be savouring the moment. The hard Brexiteers in the government are convinced that Ceta represents a perfect model of corporate-led trade which, without the shackles of the EU and with not even a whiff of democratic control over trade policy, can replace Britain’s relationship with the EU post-Brexit.

To remind ourselves, Ceta (the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement) is the sister deal of the better known – and now defeated – TTIP trade deal between the US and EU. Just like its sibling, it’s not about conventional “free trade”, that’s to say, reducing tariffs. Rather, the whole purpose is reducing regulation on business, the idea being that it will make it easier to export.

But it will do far more than that. Through so-called “regulatory cooperation”, standards would be reduced across the board on the basis that they are “obstacles to trade”. That could include food safety, workers’ rights and environmental regulation.

One example has already reared its head. Tar sands oil is one of the most environmentally destructive fossil fuels in the world, and the majority of this oil is extracted in Canada. When the EU proposed prohibitive regulations which would effectively stop tar sands flowing into Europe, Canada used Ceta as a bargaining chip to block the proposal. Ceta will lock the decision into place.

Despite some fancy footwork to reform the infamous “corporate court” system, which gives foreign investors their own special legal process to sue governments, that system is very much still in place in Ceta. In fact, the EU would like this system to become a sort of new global court system – giving big business their own permanent international legal system to obstruct troublesome governments which try to put the environment or social protection ahead of corporate interests.

Campaigners in the EU and Canada have relentlessly opposed Ceta, together with TTIP, with a 3.5 million strong petition and resolutions passed by hundreds of local authorities across Europe declaring themselves to be TTIP and Ceta-free. TTIP was dropped altogether and remains dormant. When the Belgian regional parliament of Wallonia got in on the act and threatened to veto the whole deal, as is their prerogative, things got serious on Ceta.

The European Commission suggested that it didn’t need to listen to each member state parliament, but the European Court of Justice said they did – at least as long as the corporate court remained a part of it. Although Ceta will be “provisionally applied” from tomorrow, that doesn’t include the corporate court system, which must still wait until all member state parliaments have ratified the deal.

What’s more this applies to all similar trade deals in the future. Any deal like Ceta will need to pass though all parliaments. And its gets worse for the Commission because Belgium has now taken a case, under pressure from Wallonia, to test whether these sorts of trade deals are even compatible with European constitutional principles. A Financial Times editorial has called for anything resembling corporate courts to be ditched from trade deals.

So far so good, for those of us who want a fundamentally different trade policy. Unless we live in Britain. Because Theresa May has taken a different message from the Ceta debacle.

Britain was always vociferously committed to the corporate court system and believed in the most extreme version of Ceta. Out of the EU, May believes Britain can dispense of the democratic accountability that has held Ceta up and push through such deals under royal prerogative. That’s because, as things stand, the British parliament has no right to set guidelines on trade talks, no right to see any of the negotiating papers, no right to amend or to stop trade deals.

We’ve seen this play out once already. Trade Secretary Liam Fox was forced to apologise to parliament 12 months ago when he signed off Ceta on behalf of Britain without a single debate in parliament. He claimed there’d be “no time”, even though the negotiations ended two years before.

Fox said the UK parliament would eventually be able to scrutinise the trade deal. As Ceta comes into effect, parliament is still waiting. It is surely ironic that our friends in the Wallonian parliament might have more say over an EU-UK trade deal than MPs in Westminster.

But Ceta is important to May for another reason. It is a model for post-Brexit trade. That’s why May said she wanted to retain Ceta when she visited Canada this week.

And it gets worse. A Ceta type deal is exactly what some of her colleagues would like to sign with the EU. Gone are the human rights, environmental protections and free movement provisions of EU membership. They would be replaced with a liberalising trade deal accountable only to big business. Our membership of the ECJ so hated by Brexiteers would be replaced by some version of a corporate court system.

This week May has been meeting with big business including major banks, Amazon and BAE systems. Her most concrete achievement seems to be getting Tesco products on Canadian shelves. This should tell us more about the Government's Brexit vision than anything we've heard in parliament. A gigantic, cut price supermarket.

There’s still hope that Ceta can be stopped. It still hasn't made it through all member state parliaments. But unless we can grab some element of democratic accountability of trade deals, the future of Britain could be Ceta on steroids.

Nick Dearden is director of Global Justice Now, a campaign group that mobilises people in the UK for change, and act in solidarity with those fighting injustice, particularly in the global south.