Theresa May's first pledge as PM was for a 'one-nation Britain'. Can she deliver?

Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform, who talks regularly to senior officials in all other EU governments, says those who believe the UK can have its cake and eat it from Brexit – access to the single market and limits on free movement – are deluding themselves. The Brexit con will soon be exposed: “The other members of the EU are not prepared to give Britain full access to the single market, as Norway enjoys, or large parts of it, as Switzerland has, without our accepting the conditions Norway and Switzerland meet: substantial payments into the EU budget and complete openness to workers from EU countries."

“The 27 will be tough with the British on this point because of principle – they regard the ‘four freedoms’ of openness to flows of goods, services, capital and labour as indivisible; and because of realpolitik they do not want the UK to be seen to flourish outside the EU since that could encourage Eurosceptics in many other member states to say, ‘Let us join the British on the outside’. ”