LONDON — How much do the British people really know what the government intends to negotiate on its behalf?
In the frenzy of rolling Brexit commentary that assails us every hour, it is easy to forget that for six months after the vote, the British government had no straightforward answer to the question: Will the U.K. stay in the single market?
I know because I had to write something in place of an answer.
You can legitimately argue that our prolonged vagueness gave us time to test Brussels’ flexibility on single market terms and time to ensure cabinet consensus.
But that time also came at a high cost to the U.K.’s credibility — in the eyes of EU elites at the negotiating table, with elements of the media and with the British public.
So far, the government has largely declined to explain to the country the choices it must make in agreeing its withdrawal from — and future relationship with — the bloc. It has communicated much of its vision through repetition of tropes and slogans that obscured, rather than revealed, meaning.
Theresa May’s speech in Florence — an “update on negotiations” according to my former Downing Street colleagues — is an overdue opportunity to communicate clearly on the government’s strategy.
The more the U.K. can communicate frankly with its citizens and its negotiating partners about the reality of the trade-offs it faces, the better
I was a civil servant and, like the prime minister herself, worked both sides of the Brexit street in good faith. Until last month, I led on Brexit communications inside Downing Street. Before the referendum, I did precisely the same job from an obverse position: arguing for the U.K. to remain inside the EU. (Inside a reformed EU, as we insisted at the time — pointlessly, as it turned out.)
I hope she has learned the same lesson I did. Namely, the more the U.K. can communicate frankly with its citizens and its negotiating partners about the reality of the trade-offs it faces, the better.
Not only that, explaining it will help the U.K. secure a deal that has the consent of its people.
French President Emmanuel Macron welcomes British PM Theresa May at the Elysée Palace Thierry | Chesnot/Getty Images
The notion that Whitehall can’t cope is false — capable people are getting on with the task at hand.
But the task at hand is on a scale that bears no modern comparison in a democracy: The U.K. has decided to upend its economic and geopolitical model for a largely undetermined course. Given the size of this upheaval, there is a basic civic imperative to explain to people what it will mean.
To the prime minister’s credit, her Lancaster House speech in January was in part an exercise in explanation.
The result of the referendum, she argued, precluded membership of the single market and the treaty obligations that go alongside it. This was a subjective interpretation of the result, but it was accompanied with some justification: abiding by the so-called “four freedoms,” with the European Court of Justice as an arbiter, she said, was simply incompatible with the U.K. meaningfully extricating itself from the EU.
Economically inadvisable as many think leaving the single market is, senior European leaders nevertheless welcome the clarity of the position. And those of us paid to elaborate and defend the government’s position at least had a point of substance to argue about.
Ministers have since set out negotiating objectives on other issues, but only vaguely indicated how these will be traded off against one another. Papers have been published, but these have mostly avoided giving a clear hierarchy of needs.
The recent position paper on customs, for example, lists strategic priorities: frictionless trade with the EU; avoiding a hard border in Ireland; and having an independent trade policy.
These goals are not all achievable — or more precisely, they are not all completely achievable. The U.K. will have either to generously interpret their meaning (not unusual for a government) or decide which objectives are more important than others.
Whatever your view of last year’s campaign, U.K. voters made a choice.
The same is true of the government’s oft-repeated desire to avoid “a return to the borders of the past” in Ireland. It started as an elegant way of encapsulating concern but its repetition led to accusations that we did not understand or care enough to actually name the problem: Which borders of the past? Customs posts, immigration checks or security checkpoints?
The government is very slowly starting to acknowledge these trade-offs. And the limited evidence is that the public can handle it.
The position paper on Ireland says the U.K. wants to maintain the Common Travel Area “without compromising in any way Ireland’s ability to honor its obligations as an EU member state, including in relation to free movement for EEA nationals in Ireland.”
This is a trade-off. The government is telling us that preserving the ability of people to move freely between Northern Ireland and the Republic is more important than taking back complete control of the U.K.’s borders.
British Prime Minister Theresa May | Chris J Ratcliffe/Getty Images
The Sun — not known to idealize freedom of movement or Irish nationalism — reported that the “Craic Door” of an open Irish border would allow illegal migrants into Britain. But it also acknowledged that it was designed to solve a “dilemma” and noted the position was welcomed by Irish politicians like Foreign Minister Simon Coveney.
Hordes of disillusioned Brexit activists have yet to take to the streets in protest over the Craic Door. They may yet do so, but if they do the government can plausibly defend the policy and explain why it exists: How and why it made a choice.
Whatever your view of last year’s campaign, U.K. voters made a choice. That vote now necessitates a series of further choices and trade-offs. At the same time, those who think the result of the referendum should be entirely reversed will have to explain how and why they want to prioritize economic stability over democratic purity.
But those people are not in power. For now, it is for the government to set aside platitudes and explain clearly to the public the choices, and compromises, it wishes to make on their behalf.
Matthew O’Toole is the former chief press officer for Brexit in No. 10 Downing Street.