Will Theresa May’s ‘third way’ customs plan work?

EU dismisses prime minister’s Brexit
proposals as ‘unrealistic’

One-Minute Read

Details of the new plan have not been revealed publicly but
senior ministers will discuss it at Chequers, the prime minister’s country retreat, on
Friday, the BBC understands.

Both previous customs models, the so-called “customs partnership” and “max fac”
solution reliant on new technologies to avoid border checks, have
been rejected by various sections of the cabinet.

The BBC says the government has now deemed both
options “practically or politically undeliverable” and is working
on a third option, believed to involve “alignment” with the EU in
regulations covering trade in goods but a looser relationship for
services.

BBC political correspondent Chris Mason says Downing Street
hopes this compromise will give it a way out of its customs bind
and go some way to finding a workable solution to the Irish border
issue.

However, the signs that the government is starting from scratch
– nearly one year after customs plans were first published and just
four days before the Chequers showdown – “are certain to add to
criticism of Brexit chaos” says The Independent.

According to the Daily Telegraph, “the word from Whitehall
is that Mrs May could indeed be preparing to significantly ‘pink’
those red lines, proposing a new “customs arrangement” or “third
way” that will see close alignment with EU rules on industrial
goods and a commensurate degree of EU oversight”.

However, senior EU officials have already dismissed the prime
minister’s draft Brexit plan as unrealistic, saying the UK has no
chance of changing the European Union’s founding principles.

The Guardian confirms that the government’s
long-awaited White Paper on a future trading relationship with the
EU “is expected to propose the UK remaining indefinitely in a
single market for goods after Brexit, to avoid the need for checks
at the Irish border”.

But while the paper says the UK “is offering concessions on
financial services, it wants restrictions on free movement of
people – a long-standing no-go for the EU”.

While unacceptable to Brussels, the prime minister’s plan also
risks provoking hardline Brexiteers in her own party, who argue
that effectively staying in the single market for goods will leave
the UK’s hands tied when it comes to negotiating any future
post-Brexit trade agreement.

Writing in the Daily Telegraph, arch-Brexiteer Jacob
Rees-Mogg said he and other members of the 60-strong group of
Eurosceptic Tory MPs he leads would reject a deal that did not
amount to a clean break with the EU.