Theresa May says U.K. Has to face 'hard facts' on Brexit

“In certain ways, our access to each other’s markets will be less than it is now,” May told an invited audience in London, accepting that the European Union would never agree to a deal that allowed Britain “to enjoy all the benefits without all of the obligations.”

“The reality is that we all need to face up to some hard facts,” she added.

However, May said she hoped to gain some favorable treatment on trade by offering “binding commitments” to stick to some European rules and regulations, while staying under the remit of European agencies that supervise sectors like pharmaceuticals — proposals that the hard Brexit faction might find difficult to swallow.

But there was little comfort for pro-Europeans either, no sign of May buckling to pressure and rethinking her rejection of membership in a customs union with the European Union.

The leader of the opposition Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, took that step this week, supporting membership in an as-yet-undefined customs union. By removing the need for frontier checks on trade, that would solve one of the greatest post-Brexit headaches, ensuring the flow of commerce across the border between Ireland in the European Union, and Northern Ireland in the United Kingdom.

In rejecting a customs union, May said membership would “mean we had less control than we do now over our trade in the world.” But she offered no answers to the Irish border question, beyond previous vague assertions that technological solutions can be found.

Having lost her parliamentary majority in disastrous elections last year, May has been reduced to mediating clashes between the warring factions in her Cabinet, which is split between those who favor a clean break with Europe and those who want something softer to protect trade.

Her compromise is to divide the economy into three sectors: those like the auto industry, where European Union and British rules would remain the same; those that would remain broadly aligned; and those where the rules would diverge.

European Union officials have dismissed this as an unworkable, if more sophisticated, variant of the idea once advanced by the foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, that Britain could have its cake and eat it, too.

Nevertheless, the European Union’s chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, welcomed May’s “clarity” in confirming that she wanted to leave Europe’s economic structures and accepting that there were trade-offs. Her speech helped preparations for a free-trade agreement, he added in a Twitter post that implied the outcome would be a much less ambitious deal than the one May wants.

Other reaction from continental Europe was less polite, including from Manfred Weber, a German member of the European Parliament and leader of its center-right grouping.

“Theresa May needed to move beyond vague aspirations. We can only hope that serious proposals have been put in the post,” said Guy Verhofstadt, the European Parliament’s Brexit coordinator and a former prime minister of Belgium.

“While I welcome the call for a deep and special partnership, this cannot be achieved by putting a few extra cherries on the Brexit cake.”

British negotiators remain optimistic about eventually cinching a deal because continental Europe, as a net exporter of goods to Britain, has an interest in keeping trade lines open.

The problem, as European leaders have stressed all along, is that granting too favorable a deal to Britain could weaken the single market, and might induce other wealthy nations that also pay a lot into the European Union’s coffers to follow London out the door.

In tone, at least, May struck a pragmatic note, conceding that “there is no escaping the complexity of the task ahead of us,” though Pascal Lamy, a former head of the World Trade Organization, recently used a more striking phrase. Extracting Britain from European economic structures after more than four decades of integration was about “as difficult as removing an egg from an omelet,” he told a British parliamentary committee.

The Brexit endgame, when May is likely to have to decide which faction in her divided party to disappoint, could still be some months away, and will carry political perils.

But things could go awry sooner. This month European Union leaders hope to agree on a deal on a standstill transition deal to protect business from the economic shock of a “cliff edge” Brexit and sudden change of rules. That, in turn, might demand hard answers to the Irish border problem.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Theresa May says U.K. Has to face 'hard facts' on Brexit

Striking a note of realism for her domestic audience, May accepted that Britain’s departure, known as Brexit, would reduce trade with the European Union’s giant single market, which she intends her country to quit.

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