Thread by @pmdfoster

This week I wrote 2,000 words explaining why the EU will "shoot down" May's 'third way'...

telegraph.co.uk/politics/2018/…

And this morning a column on why they shouldn't do it. /1

telegraph.co.uk/politics/2018/…

We keep saying both sides needs to find a space between Canada Dry and Norway plus, but at risk of stating the obvious, that is easier said than done.

Hard battle lines are being drawn up in the Commission. Exasperation levels are reaching danger levels. /2

But the EU has choices to make too, and frankly shooting holes in the British cabinet at the moment is fish-in-a-barrel stuff.

The EU has legitimate concerns on cherry-picking and level-playing field issues, but these can be addressed. /3

There are clear signs that the UK is ready to co-operate.

Noteworthy, per sources on both sides, that the UK side recently ready to do a deal on a Ukraine-style governance agreement.

The Commission/Barnier stalled to avoid isolating Ireland. /4

Recall the Mansion House speech, May on state aid/competition. The clear desire to align on industrial goods. The 'soft Brexit' has been heavily telegraphed. /5

Recall decision to create register of UK Geographical Indications for products like Cheddar Cheese etc.

That clearly points in EU direction, not the US trade-maker model. Only a matter of time before UK agrees EU 'stock' too (Feta, Champagne etc).

Signals everywhere. /6

So, yes, the UK does want to cherry-pick a bit - and clearly on Free movement - but if the EU remains intransigent on all fronts, offering Mrs May only non-choices, then we end up in a disaster.

A mutual disaster, not just for immediate chaos, but the future. /7

This is a divorce where the separating parties, increasingly bitterly separated, are condemned to live next door to each other in perpetuity.

We have to get along, on a 10 year horizon./8

Of course all this sounds like special pleading, and Westminster is becoming a global embarrassment, but we need to find a way.

The EU needs to read between the lines; offer the UK market access commensurate with the obligations it is clearly signalling it will take on /9

But there's a problem. May still can't come clean with where reality says she must be heading.

The reheat of the New Customs Partnership, if it's really as billed, is just going to wind the Commission up. Indeed, it IS winding the Commission up. Even before it is published. /10

A unicorn is being served up for sacrifice. Perhaps it's a scheme to educate the Brexiteers. If so it's a dangerous one.

No 10 still skirts over the plain reality that, as HMRC has said, nothing is ready until 2023 at the absolute earliest. There will need to be a 'bridge' /11

Consider a 'temporary customs arrangement' after 2020 that offers both sides stability, the EU some money (tricky budget negotiations for 2020-27 coming up) with guarantees on level-playing field etc. as we work out a new future. That's not irrational. /12

It may not constitute the required punishment on EU side (worse of out than in) and the Commission will hate. It argues it's a way of the Brits stringing this out to get to a cherry-picked place (true to a point).

But can member states take a less rigid path? /13

Maybe all this is for the birds. The Brexiteers must be humoured with the impossible, to produce an 'offer' that is unsaleable'.

Chequers MUST deliver something that makes EU stop and think. By definition it cannot cater only for a domestic audience. /14

Probably, that's too hard. So we kick the can again, and the chances of ever getting the EU into the space we need to be, diminishes still further. If it is not gone already.

We seem to failing. Us and the EU. Jointly. In. Awful. Slow. Motion :(

15/ END