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Courtesy of the Times.
Theresa May has divided her warring cabinet into two rival camps to fight out their differences on Brexit. Her top team is split over how Britain should manage its customs arrangements with the EU after it leaves the bloc. Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, has called her favoured customs partnership model “crazy”. He and other Brexiteers favour an alternative plan called “max-fac”. This is opposed by Philip Hammond, the chancellor, and others who say it would damage the economy and break Britain’s promise to avoid a hard border with Ireland. A meeting of the Brexit cabinet sub-committee last week broke down without agreement. To break the deadlock Mrs May has appointed two new working groups on each of the rival solutions.
Liam Fox, the trade secretary, Michael Gove, the environment secretary, and David Lidington, the Cabinet Office minister, have been given the task of working on the customs partnership model. Greg Clark, the business secretary, David Davis, the Brexit secretary, and Karen Bradley, the Northern Ireland secretary, will look at the max-fac model. Tellingly, neither Mr Johnson nor Mr Hammond, who represent the opposing poles of the debate, has been asked to take part. Mrs May met both groups, which each include Brexit and Remain- supporting ministers, in Downing Street yesterday and asked them to work towards an agreed position.
However, Germany’s EU commissioner played down the chances of progress. “Madame May is weak and Boris Johnson has the same hairdo as Trump. That says everything,” Günther Oettinger, 64, said. “We can only hope that sensible citizens will put Madame May on the path to a clever Brexit.”
Explaining Mrs May’s decision on the working groups, an insider said that she had picked the teams to include individuals with departmental responsibility for areas most affected by the proposals. “So if the charge against the customs partnership model is that it limits the UK’s ability to strike free trade deals, then Liam [Fox] can make that case and they can work through the issues,” the source said. “Similarly if the trouble with max-fac is supposed to be Ireland then Karen [Bradley, the northern Ireland secretary] can work out whether there is a way around that.” The move is bound to trigger suspicions, however. Mr Davis is the only supporter in his group of max-fac, or maximum facilitation, which would rely on technology as part of attempts to minimise checks at the border.
Mr Clark’s inclusion is particularly likely to irritate Brexiteers. The business secretary warned on Sunday that the future of some of Britain’s most critical industries depended on maintaining free-flowing trade borders.