Brexit won’t be over by 29 March 2019. Britain will legally leave the European Union on that date. But that won’t tell us what Britain’s future relationship with the bloc will be, or how closely aligned the UK will be to the EU. Those are questions for which we will have to wait for the answers.
What MPs will vote on before next March is not a ‘Brexit deal’ but a withdrawal agreement. Theresa May won’t come to the Commons and table her Chequers plan for approval, which is just as well given that she doesn’t currently have the votes to pass it. Rather, she will put forward an agreement that sets out the financial settlement between the UK and the EU, what rights EU citizens here will have and vice versa, along with the arrangements for the Irish border. The agreement will contain a statement on the future relationship but it will be a non-legally binding political declaration, thereby opening the door to a ‘blind Brexit’. For the words in the political declaration might be little more than fudge: vague commitments that are subject to interpretation and easily wriggled out of.
Mrs May had wanted a highly detailed plan. After all, if MPs are voting to hand over £39 billion to the EU, they would want to know what they’ll be getting in return. They will want to make sure they’re not paying for a trade deal that Canada and South Korea have for free.
But detail might not be helpful when it comes to getting the withdrawal agreement through Parliament. It might make it easier for Mrs May to win over her recalcitrant MPs, a task that is being taken so seriously that the chief whip is giving cabinet ministers individual lists of MPs to work on, if the political declaration is not too prescriptive.
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