Wrote this earlier this week on business and Brexit, but on reflection it doesn't capture quite how bad things are even under this best case scenario businessgreen.com/bg/blog-post/3… 
Lots of well sourced reporting this week seems to suggest the Chequers meeting will see PM push for a softer form of Brexit and the likelihood is EU would then push for a softer version still.
This makes sense for lots of reason. It delivers the mandate and gets the UK out of the EU, it respects the closeness of the referendum, and, most importantly, it averts billions of pounds and Lord knows how many jobs being lost.
If there was a single strategic thinker in the leading Brexiter ranks (apart from Michael Gove) they would snap this up.
They could present themselves as the reasonable party, willing to compromise, and, of course, they would have the UK out of the EU. And from there it would be much easier to pursue their long term strategic goal.
Because once we were out of the EU but in the EEA they could go to work. 'Why is the EU still dictating which toasters we use? Why are we still paying them anything? How dare they fine us, we'll pollute our air if we want to?'
After a few years of that (and yet more austerity and some soft Brexit job losses and a government stretched to breaking point) they could say 'look, we tried it your way, we really did, we were reasonable, now let's do Brexit properly'.
And then Prime Minister Gove or Johnson or Javid would have the main chance. Win an election and secure a hard Brexit mandate, but with more time to plan for what that means.
Fact so few Hard Brexiters recognise a soft Brexit could act as stepping stone to where they want to go tells you 2 things:
1. There's not a strategic thinker amongst them
2. For all their bluster they have little confidence that after this shitshow they could secure that mandate
1. There's not a strategic thinker amongst them
2. For all their bluster they have little confidence that after this shitshow they could secure that mandate
And what it means for everyone else is what Brexit has always meant. Even if crisis is averted, even if a soft Brexit is secured and the UK can attempt to move on from the last few years, the Brexit row is Never. Going. To. End.
The only possible end is that modern business and demographics eventually leave the Hard Brexiters isolated, but we're decades away from that. In short, it is not just business that Boris wants to fuck off. businessgreen.com/bg/blog-post/3…
