It is not too late to compromise to protect British jobs from the shock of Brexit

David Frost, the British negotiator in the trade talks with the European Union, says there is no point in extending the transition period if that simply means it takes longer for the two sides to fail to agree. He has a point, but it poses a question for both sides.

It is true that Michel Barnier, Mr Frost’s opposite number, has been imperiously inflexible in his conduct of the negotiations, but the British side has been inflexible too. If the British side were to adopt a more pragmatic position, we believe that the EU side would respond. Then there might well be a case for postponing our departure from the single market beyond 31 December in order to allow the intensive negotiations that would be needed.

The Independent accepts that the UK has left the EU, but we continue to believe that leaving the single market without a deal, subjecting EU trade to border checks and tariffs under World Trade Organisation terms, would be the worst possible destination for the Brexit process.

Some of the prime minister’s advisers are said to believe that now is the best time to go for a “hard” Brexit, because no one will notice the additional economic damage in the chaos of a Covid-19 recession. We hope that this is not true: it would be the most irresponsible attitude to the British economy since Margaret Thatcher thought it needed a short, sharp shock to restore its vitality. That resulted in mass unemployment that scarred many parts of the country for a generation.

We hope, too, that Dominic Cummings was not kept on because the Vote Leave cabal in No 10 feared that without him the prime minister would go “soft” on Brexit.

The cost of a no-deal exit from the single market is not some abstract damage to “the economy”; it means more people out of work. Ministers are reported to be worried about the loss of jobs that is bound to follow the unwinding of the coronavirus furlough scheme. If that is the case, it simply makes no sense for them to believe that even higher unemployment is a price worth paying to complete Brexit.

That is why we argue that the time has come to rethink the Brexit strategy. Is it not time to look again at the idea of keeping the UK in a customs union with the EU? Even the Democratic Unionist Party has realised that the prime minister has sold it down the Irish Sea by putting border posts in Northern Irish ports to check goods arriving from the rest of the UK.

A customs union would be the sort of bold initiative that might unlock a deal that would benefit both sides. If Mr Johnson does care about unemployment, he should consider it.