Theresa May's deal is not Canada Plus - it's Remain Minus. Why pretend otherwise?

While some may doubt Donald Trump’s claim to be a friend of Britain’s, his intervention in the Brexit debate this week has been timely and depressingly accurate. The deal that Theresa May has brought back from Brussels, and which she will put before the Commons on 11 December, is indeed a good deal for the European Union. Brussels retains control over the British economy but no longer has to deal with the British in its various voting procedures. Britain agrees not to become more competitive through regulatory reform, and its chances of striking trade deals are slim.

So Trump was merely saying, in his usual offhand manner, what other world leaders have been thinking. His thoughts are echo-ed in Australia, which had been looking forward to doing a trade deal with the UK. Tony Abbott, its former prime minister, has argued in this magazine that Australians cannot understand why Britain should be so terrified of what is wrongly called a ‘no-deal Brexit’. Australians know this as ‘world trade rules’; as Abbott says, if Aussies can handle this system, then why should the UK, the world’s fifth-largest economy, think it can’t?

May has spent much of the past two years advocating a globally minded Brexit. At Davos in January 2017, the same month as the Lancaster House speech in which she committed herself to seeking a free-trade deal with the EU rather than membership of the single market and customs union, she put it well. The UK has often been at the forefront of economic and social change, she said. It will ‘step up to a new leadership role as the strongest and most forceful advocate for business, free markets and free trade anywhere in the world’.