Andy Burnham's options for the UK and the EU arrive as twenty-six repair practices before the next summit.
Andy Burnham's review of the UK's relationship with the EU has been cast as a repair session. The options are ways of staying in the room, not the old halfway deals. A later vote, if it comes, would ask whether anyone feels steady enough to try again.
On Tuesday a draft agenda for the next UK-EU summit, expected at the end of November, listed twenty-six items and not one of them was a tariff.
Andy Burnham wants that summit to follow a review of the UK's relationship with the EU, as the Guardian and the BBC have set out. He has said Brexit has done more harm than good. The new papers treat the review as a session for two parties who still share a kitchen.
Each of the twenty-six items is a repair practice, not a trade lever. One asks both sides to name the hour trust left the room. Another asks the UK to wait until the EU has finished a sentence.
Dr Nia Calder, brought in to hold the review the way a counsellor holds a couple, said the work was late and still kind. "We have spent years talking about access," she said. "Access is the word we reach for when we are afraid to say we miss the structure."
The options to be laid out will not be the familiar set of halfway houses. Rejoining, if it is even offered, would count as getting back together only if both sides mean it, and only after the UK has picked up the care work it left on the table.
A secure option would align rules on food and medicine, then ask both customs services to initial a shared note of feelings. An anxious option would request reassurance in writing, file the reply as a slight, and ask for the reply again.
An avoidant option would leave the single market, mute the group chat, and call the silence a boundary. Calder said a boundary is love that has found a calendar.
What a vote looks like after the talking
A referendum, if one follows, will not ask people to pick a winner. Draft wording among the papers asks whether voters feel steady enough to try again.
The note says either answer is valid. It also says neither answer moves a boat, a lorry or a vial of medicine, which is left for a later, less tender meeting.
A spokesperson on the Commission side, who asked to be known only as the other chair, was warm and exact. "We can hold the feeling," they said. "We cannot co-parent the cod."
We cannot co-parent the cod.
Calder said ministers would not centre their own exit. Partner governments would speak first. Listening with a closed mouth would be minuted as a deliverable, and anyone who interrupted would step out until their body had settled.
The summit will open with a short quiet. No one will be asked to apologise for the old vote. They will be asked where the word border still sits in the body, and then the clocks will start.
