Theresa May will announce that Britain is seeking a clean and hard Brexit in a speech this week that will promise to create a “strong new partnership” with the European Union.
The prime minister will finally lay her cards on the table, making clear that the UK is set to pull out of the single market and the European customs union in order to regain control of immigration and end the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice.
A Downing Street source said last night that May had “gone for the full works”, although the prime minister’s staff admitted her words were likely to cause a “market correction” that could lead to a fresh fall in the pound.
In an effort to reassure voters who backed “remain”, May will say that a “global Britain” can prosper on its own.
However, she will call for the two sides of the Brexit debate to be reconciled. “The victors have the responsibility to act magnanimously. The losers have the responsibility to respect the legitimacy of the result,” she said. “And the country comes together.”
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It was also reported last night that May is set to become the first British prime minister to appear on the cover of US Vogue magazine, later this year.
Writing in The Sunday Times today, the Brexit secretary, David Davis, makes clear that Britain is seeking a new deal with the EU that will differ from the current one.
“We don’t want the EU to fail; we want it to prosper politically and economically, and we need to persuade our allies that a strong new partnership with the UK will help the EU to do that,” he writes.
Signalling that a transitional deal is on the cards, Davis adds: “If it proves necessary, we have said we will consider time for implementation of new arrangements.”
It is understood that pro-Brexit ministers such as Boris Johnson and Liam Fox are winning the argument that the UK must leave the customs union to maximise the potential of deals with non-EU countries.
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May will instead try to arrange preferential access to EU markets for the car and pharmaceuticals industries and the financial services sector as part of a new deal with Brussels.
She will use the speech on Tuesday at Lancaster House in London to call on “remain” supporters to get behind the government, saying: “We need to get on and make Brexit happen. We need to put an end to the division and the language associated with it — leaver and remainer and all the accompanying insults — and unite to make a success of Brexit and build a truly global Britain.”
She will add: “One of the reasons that Britain’s democracy has been such a success for so many years is that the strength of our identity as one nation, the respect we show to one another as fellow citizens, and the importance we attach to our institutions, means that when a vote has been held we all respect the result.
“Business isn’t calling to reverse the result, but planning to make a success of it. And the House of Commons has voted overwhelmingly for us to get on with it too.”
May will also pledge to publish a bill immediately if the Supreme Court rules that she has to obtain parliament’s permission to trigger article 50 — the process that starts Brexit. Ministers expect the ruling a week tomorrow.
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Ambassadors from each of the other 27 EU nations have been invited to attend May’s speech, so they will be in no doubt about Britain’s approach. Also in the audience will be the senior UK officials charged with delivering her vision of Brexit.
Despite the positive tone, a senior government official said the reality that the government was seeking a clean break meant “we are expecting a market correction”.
Another source close to May told The Sunday Telegraph: “She’s gone for the full works. People will know when she said ‘Brexit means Brexit’ she really meant it.”
The buoyant mood among some in the party comes as new polling indicates the public trusts it with Brexit negotiations over Labour by a wide margin: 30% of people trust the Conservatives to deliver a successful deal, compared with 13% for Labour and 11% for Ukip, according to an Opinium poll for The Observer.
May’s hard Brexit stance will put her on a collision course with former ministers on the Tory back benches who believe the UK should stay in the single market. A poll today finds that 54% of voters who backed “leave” in the referendum are not prepared to take a financial hit to win back control of immigration. The YouGov survey for the Open Britain campaign also shows that only 11% of “leave” voters are prepared to be £100 a month worse off.
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May will get a boost from a paper published today by the think tank Policy Exchange that recommends a “clean Brexit”. Written by the economists Gerard Lyons and Liam Halligan, it advises May to offer the EU tariff-free trade but prepare for failure, arguing that the UK will still prosper with tariffs set by the World Trade Organisation.
Last night it was reported that May had posed for the cover of US Vogue magazine, of which she is said to be a lifelong fan. The photograph was taken at her Chequers retreat by the American photographer Annie Leibovitz last week, according to The Sun on Sunday.
The release of the Vogue edition is expected to coincide with May’s visit to Washington in February to meet Donald Trump.
• Jeremy Corbyn warned that the prime minister would be pursuing an “extremely risky” strategy if she chooses to lead the UK out of the single market.
The Labour leader also suggested there could be a “trade war” with the EU on the horizon as he responded to claims from the chancellor that Britain may have to slash corporation tax to remain competitive outside of the bloc.
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“It seems to me a recipe for some kind of trade war with Europe in the future. That doesn’t really seem to me a very sensible way forward,” he told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show this morning.
He also used the interview to repeat his claims that Theresa May was leading the UK in the direction of a “bargain basement economy on the shores of Europe” where not only do we have low corporate taxation but we “will lose access to half our export market”.
Corbyn criticised comments made by the chancellor Philip Hammond in an interview with the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag this morning in which he said Britain would have to change its economic model if it left the single market. The chancellor was accused of indicating that the UK could become a “tax haven”.
