‘Dirty Harry’ Theresa May has to take the final shot: a Chequers-Lite deal

High on a hill stands a lonely British PM. Theresa May’s visit this week to the Sound of Music territory of Salzburg represents her opportunity to advance Brexit negotiations since a ragged get-together in March. It is a stiff upward climb, with a thin supply of EU-approved oxygen, but it has better hopes of a decent outcome than her previous forays into EU talking shops.

Belatedly, May realised one important thing. Selling a version of “Chequers-Lite” is her sole option. Her fragile premiership would not survive another bouleversement of stance on the most important issue facing the country. Having flipped from flirting unconvincingly with a harder, more reckless Brexit to the Chequers deal, which seeks to align the UK as closely to its major trade partner and geographically close allies as possible, she might as well embrace Jacob Rees-Mogg’s “Dirty Harry” jibe — and take the crucial shot.

The “Chequers or no deal” option put forward by the PM in her Panorama interview is a recognition of realities. There is some last-minute elasticity in the EU’s negotiating stance, but it is minimal and has to be carefully calculated and, crucially, she needs to persuade the Commission (via France and Germany) to agree to a special summit in November to clinch the outlines of a deal.

The message that May’s sherpas have taken to the EU is that failure to support her will lead to an outbreak of Boris Johnson-itis, with additional symptoms of Rees-Moggery and a general no-can-do outcome. This would be very bad for Britain. But it would also create technical headaches for EU exporters.

So if May can persuade the other 27 member states to avoid a glacial welcome this week, and agree to a summit to fix the outline of a withdrawal deal, the Alpine outing will have been judged a success by No 10.

The PM is negotiating two obstacle courses at once. “Her recurring nightmare,” says an aide, “is that the timelines never coincide.” The Government gained a valuable concession this week on the Ireland border plan to avoid a “hard backstop” unacceptable to the DUP and her backbenchers. This, however, raised the temperature in the parliamentary party and the stakes for the party conference at the end of the month.

It has become a commonplace that Chequers is “dead” but that is not quite the case. It will continue on life support as the only basis that the senior member states of the EU will accept as the basis for a deal. And while it is invidious to make predictions, I would judge the underlying mood, especially in Berlin, to be the avoidance of “no deal”.

“In the end,” a close ally of Angela Merkel in the German Parliament tells me, “Merkel wants this subject off the to-do list. She will scowl about freedom of movement, but she is a pragmatist.”

Ambitious Cabinet ministers scent that being an agile compromiser in the next six months gives them better chances of long-term rewards than choosing an ornery campaign for a fantasy Brexit on Britain’s terms (the Boris manifesto), or getting lost in the weeds of a push for a second vote.

So note the careful language chosen by Michael Gove, the philosopher king of the moderate Leave court, in his BBC interview. Where Leavers once sold conviction as their political stock-in-trade, they now wish to showcase their readiness to reside in a halfway house.

Gove’s solution is a lukewarm embrace of Chequers as a way-marker to the final form of Brexit. It gives him two years to figure out what that might look like. By which time the May era will be giving way to a new incarnation.

Jeremy Hunt, who voted Remain and now identifies as Leave, gives Chequers — and May personally — warmer support. Sajid Javid is positioning himself as the chap who could lead the Tories best in the event of a “no deal”. He is aiming firmly for Philip Hammond’s job by helpfully rewriting the Chancellor’s tax policy in an interview.

But none of these players can be sure how the political futures market will play out. So, as one astute Cabinet spouse, puts it, “the best plan is to stick to their knitting” and nod along with May.

If May has failed to sell Chequers with any verve at home, she is engaged in a charm offensive in continental Europe. Her earnestness in crafting Chequers earned her credit, even if the plan itself is too elaborate to work in its current form.

A visit to the Salzburg Festival this summer was really a chance to show civility to Sebastian Kurz, the new Austrian leader, presently in the revolving chair of the EU presidency,

Kurz earns headlines as an unscrupulous populist — fairly enough given his rhetoric. But he also did a savvy deal with Merkel to face down a serious challenge to her authority from the neighbouring Bavarian Conservatives over immigration and border matters. Kurz understands May’s dilemma on freedom of movement and, while he has little heft as the Right-wing head of a small country with Michel Barnier and the EU Commission, his role as host and conduit to Berlin creates a layer of “soft support” for a UK deal. All of this weighs in the final balance.

None of this means that success for May in Salzburg and beyond is guaranteed. Agitation at the Chequers plan in her own party and anger in the small but vociferous grassroots is real, and there is not yet an agreed EU plan to speed up a solution. But the PM has a good deal more credit in European capitals than she enjoyed in March.

“You’ve got to ask yourself one question: ‘Do I feel lucky?’,” drawls Dirty Harry, that great theorist of transitional arrangements when unsure what remains in his Magnum. It’s the shot she really cannot afford to miss.

Anne McElvoy is Senior Editor at The Economist