We shall never know whether Theresa May could have managed to secure the Norway option (membership of the EEA- the European Economic Area) for a post-Brexit UK, but for whatever reason (both neglected homework and political cowardice have, sadly, their place on the list of suspects) she has decided not to try.

Writing for Cap-X, Robert Colville highlights some of the difficulties that lie ahead for the UK now that an off-the-shelf option is, well, off the table:

Britain’s exit from Europe – the Article 50 bit – is handled under qualified majority voting. That means it needs the approval of most European heads of state, plus the European Parliament.
But the subsequent deal – the free trade pact that pieces together what Article 50 has torn apart – is a different beast. It is likely to be a “mixed agreement”, meaning that it has to be approved not just by the EU institutions but by every member state, including sub-national parliaments such as the Walloons in Belgium.
As I wrote back then: “In other words, Britain can get its divorce easily enough. But the subsequent settlement – the diplomatic equivalent of splitting up the properties and savings, arranging child support, sorting out custody and visitation rights – can be held hostage by every last Cypriot and Slovak with a grudge.”
The ruling today means that on the British side of the table, the deal will have to be reached by Theresa May and approved by the Parliament in Westminster.
But on the European side, if our deal counts as a mixed agreement, it will need to be approved by a welter of different national and sectional interests, by harried technocrats and swaggering populists, any one of whom could insist on conditions or carve-outs that torpedo the whole thing.
Normally, in a negotiation of one against many, the one can play off the many against each other. But this will be a different situation: one in which dozens of different entities will have a theoretical power of veto…..
Yes, Mrs May has made it clear that she is prepared to walk away without a deal. But that is still very much an option of last resort.

Indeed it is. For an understandably bleak discussion of what this (the WTO option, basically) could involve, check out Richard North’s Brexit Monograph on the topic here.

But back to the question of a “mixed agreement”

Colville:

[T]he European Court of Justice has been considering the seemingly technical question of whether the EU’s free trade deal with Singapore is a “mixed agreement” of precisely the kind we are talking about – setting a precedent for the British deal, too. Just before Christmas, the Advocate General responsible – by a peculiar coincidence, Britain’s own representative, Eleanor Sharpston – issued an advisory opinion stating that the Singapore deal was indeed a mixed agreement. Unless the court’s judges disagree with that, which is highly unlikely, a good Brexit deal will be that much harder to strike. Which leaves Britain in the unfamiliar position of pinning its hopes on the European Court of Justice – and hoping that before we escape their supervision, its members spring one last judicial surprise.

The poorly-named European Court of Justice (the EU Court) is more about forcing the pace of EU integration than justice, but this case will present it with an intriguing dilemma. Ruling that the Singapore agreement, and, by extension, any free trade deal with the UK, is a mixed agreement will make Theresa May’s “bold and ambitious” agreement very difficult to come by, an agreeable result if the court’s eurofundamentalists want to see Britain punished for leaving the EU, which they almost certainly do. On the other hand, determining that the Singapore deal is a ‘mixed agreement’ will be a blow to the ever-increasing growth of central control within the EU, something that the court of ‘ever closer union’ would be unwilling to endorse.

Time will tell.

But I am sure that Mrs May has thought this all through.

#Laughs