Jim Armitage: We’ll survive Brexit, but may find we must do without cake at all

So, slathering ourselves in Fairy Liquid to speed our progress, we take our giant leap onto the slippery wet slope towards Brexit.

With little idea about what we’re in for, or how to get it, Theresa May on Wednesday launched into the biggest, most complicated diplomatic battle since… well, ever. The ambition: to win a deal allowing us to, as someone put it, have our cake and eat it.

A deal where we retain the rights of Brits in Europe while restricting Europeans from coming here; where overseas banks can access the EU from London despite our no longer being in the Continental club; where our scientists benefit from European research co-operation while being absent from EU bodies; where we crash out of European trade deals but don’t suffer big tariffs; where we continue in seamless supply chains while erecting barriers at our ports; where we repatriate European administration to the UK while cutting the Whitehall payroll; where we relax regulatory standards on our goods and services but assume the EU will still happily import them.

Even with May’s new-found attempt at being conciliatory today (thank goodness she has dropped the “no deal is better than a bad deal” rhetoric), many of these contradictory hopes and dreams will remain just that: a fantasy.

The best we can hope for, amid the turmoil that will happen when the Brexiteers’ promises prove impossible to achieve, is that we can have transition terms while we forge a new EU trade deal and adjust to our new isolation.

It will need to be a long interregnum: trade agreements are tortuously lengthy affairs to negotiate.

We’re about to learn that lesson in other parts of the world, too, as we begin trade talks with giants such as the US from our newly weakened negotiating position.

If we are to secure terms for the EU that aren’t overly damaging for our industries — to achieve those have-our-cake-and-eat-it benefits — we will, like Switzerland, have to pump billions into the EU as we do now. And, like Switzerland, despite giving it that cash, we will have no voice at its table. That’s bad for us and, frankly, bad for Europe too.

But hold my tongue. We Remainers mustn’t speak out so negatively in these self-censored times. Only bright-eyed Brexit optimism is allowed.

In truth, we will muddle through.

Businesses have already set their Hard-Brexit plans in train, shifting jobs overseas, coping with having fewer EU nationals choosing to work and study here.

Thousands of jobs in tech, finance and manufacturing that would have come here no longer will. Prices will rise. But we’ll get through it.

Just don’t ask me to join the celebrations on this collective Day of Daftness.