The White Paper will set out the Brexit options: hard or very hard

The Prime Minister, with her skill at making concessions to the inevitable look like taking the initiative, announced today that she will publish a Brexit White Paper tomorrow. If she had not done so, she would probably have been forced to publish it by an amendment to the European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill that would have been carried with the help of Conservative Remainer MPs next week.

She knows that it is a cheap concession to make anyway. The White Paper could have consisted of Theresa May’s Lancaster House speech of 17 January with the Government’s “Honi soit qui mal y pense” crest on the cover. As it is, her officials have had time to fill it out with a little more detail of her negotiating position for her talks with her European partners.

In keeping with her incremental style, however, we may learn only one or two small new things about the Government’s position when the much-vaunted document is finally published. This is partly because the main points of the Government’s approach are already known. The big questions are settled: out of EU freedom of movement, therefore out of the single market; seeking to make trade deals around the world, therefore out of the customs union; and looking for an early reciprocal agreement to guarantee the rights of British citizens in the EU and EU citizens in Britain.

That still leaves large questions to be negotiated. Ms May has said she wants not just tariff-free access to the single market, but “frictionless” access. It is not clear yet that she is going to get it. She is obviously aware of hopeful signs from the EU negotiators that they recognise the importance of London as a financial centre to the whole of the EU, whether it is inside the EU or not. Equally, she knows that Michel Barnier, the lead negotiator, has opened his bidding at an “exit fee” of €60bn (£51bn) – a figure that Ivan Rogers, her former ambassador to the EU, confirmed was not a wild overstatement in his evidence to a select committee of MPs today.

If a Brexit deal is sealed at all within the two years provided for by Article 50, it will lie between those two poles. And always in the shadow of the default option of failure, which would mean tariffs as specified by World Trade Organisation rules, and a zero exit fee subject to whatever action the EU might take under international law to recover debts it says we owe.

It seems to be sinking in to some Labour MPs tonight just how unfavourable the Brexit settlement is likely to be for the UK. Jeremy Corbyn has decided that Brexit cannot be delayed or reversed, but at least Sir Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit Secretary, will table amendments to the bill next week designed to steer the Government towards a softer Brexit in the Article 50 negotiations.

Unfortunately, any attempts to soften Brexit are almost bound to fail. The balance of power in the negotiations is tilted towards the EU 27 rather than the UK 1. The City of London is worth something, but it is not enough to outweigh the huge collective interest of the EU in defending the privileges of membership of the club.

Whatever is in the White Paper tomorrow, it cannot point the country towards anything better than the choice between a hard Brexit and a very hard Brexit. It would be a betrayal of the national interest for any political leaders to accept that those are the only options available.