How much will Theresa May’s speech today surprise us? The Prime Minister’s promise to offer more detail on Brexit was made before Christmas, but Number 10 types seemed curiously relaxed about the prep for the speech over the holiday. And even though those briefing the speech over the weekend warned of a ‘market correction’, this is likely to have been as much to suggest that the speech was going to be big and revelatory as it was to actually warn about its content.
Today we will get the 12 priorities for May’s negotiation of Britain’s exit, which will be guided by four key principles. Those are ‘certainty and clarity’, ‘a stronger Britain’, ‘a fairer Britain’ and a ‘truly global Britain’. None of which sound like the sort of principles that anyone at any end of the political spectrum from Jeremy Corbyn to Peter Bone would disagree with.
If the speech itself is to provide clarity, then the overnight briefing has kept us waiting on the question of whether Britain will try to stay in the customs union. May’s key pre-briefed line is ‘not partial membership of the European Union, associate membership of the European Union or anything that leaves us half in, half out’. This is a longer way of saying that ‘Brexit means Brexit’, but it’s also saying to EU member states that Britain is going to take a tough negotiating stance, rather than the approach that David Cameron took in his renegotiation, which was to ask for reforms while making clear that he wouldn’t walk away if he didn’t get them.
Even if May doesn’t use her much-mocked ‘Brexit means Brexit’ catchphrase in this speech, Tory MPs are very keen for her to repeat the line that ‘we are determined to make a success of it’ by making clear that she sees Brexit as an opportunity, not an inconvenience that is likely to dominate her premiership.
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