Will Brexiters be boiled like toads at Chequers?

If you throw a toad into boiling water, it jumps out and lives. If you put the toad in warm water and gradually turn up the heat, the change in temperature is never big enough to get the lazy beast to jump out – and it dies.

Theresa May is gearing up for the next phase of her scheme to boil Brexiters in her Cabinet like toads. She has summoned the entire Cabinet to a meeting at Chequers next Friday rather than just the inner “war” Cabinet. Presumably this is because she thinks she’ll then have a clear majority over hard Brexiters such as Boris Johnson and David Davis whereas she lost that majority in the war Cabinet after Amber Rudd resigned in April and was replaced by Sajid Javid.

The prime minister seems to want to get Cabinet to agree we should stay in the EU’s single market for goods post Brexit. She then wants to publish a White Paper setting out the government’s policy the following Monday, July 9, according to The Times.

If the EU agreed such a proposal – see more on this below – it might help resolve the Irish border issue. Manufacturers such as Airbus and BMW, which have been warning they might have to pull out of the UK, might also be satisfied.

But the proposal would involve following the EU’s rules on goods and possibly joining the European Free Trade Area (EFTA) court, according to a draft version of the White Paper circulating in Whitehall, according to a separate report in The Times. The Brexiter toads would find the water temperature rising.

That’s presumably why Johnson is thinking “maybe he should try and bring Theresa May down from within government”, according to BBC’s Newsnight. But his chance of doing that may be slim given that Cabinet colleagues are giving him the cold shoulder after his “f*** business” outburst and his runner to Kabul when Parliament voted on a new Heathrow runway this week.

If the prime minister gets her single market for goods proposal through Cabinet, that won’t be remotely the end of the story. The Spanish foreign minister told the Guardian that Germany, France and Spain are all opposed to the idea, although cracks are emerging within the EU about it, according to The Times.

What seems clear is that May will have to make at least three more adjustments before it could fly:

• Customs. The prime minister seems to want to go ahead with the “maximum facilitation” scheme the EU has already rejected. A customs union is probably the only viable option – meaning we wouldn’t be able to pursue an independent trade policy.
• Money. It’s hard to see the EU letting us stay in the single market for goods unless we pay into its budget – without a say on how it is spent.
• Unfair competition. The EU will want to ensure our companies don’t get an unfair advantage by slashing social and environmental rules or subsidising our industries. It will insist we follow its rules on all these things not just on industrial goods – and do so without a vote on them.

May isn’t ready to agree any of this yet. But she’ll need to if she wants a deal. Over the coming months, expect her to make one concession after another – gradually turning up the heat on the toads.

It won’t just be the Brexiters who are unhappy about being turned into what Johnson used to call a “vassal state”. Such a deal wouldn’t please many pro-Europeans either – not least because a single market in goods wouldn’t do anything for our services industries, which account for four fifths of the economy. All the more reason for a People’s Vote on the final deal.

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Edited by Luke Lythgoe