Theresa May will lead us into a bleak future – outside the single market | Martin Kettle

Few grasp the enormity of the prime minister’s focus on border controls ahead of EU trade. It will make us all poorer

In a famous eulogy published following his death in 1881, the Times wrote of the 19th-century Tory prime minister Benjamin Disraeli that he “discerned the Conservative working man in the inarticulate mass of the English populace, as the sculptor perceives the angel imprisoned in a block of marble”.

Can Disraeli’s admirer Theresa May already discern the shape of her Brexit deal imprisoned in the block of marble too? This week’s cabinet meeting at Chequers gave us some clues about the Britain the prime minister sees in her mind’s eye. A briefing stressed that curbing migration is a red line, and that Britain is not interested in an off-the-shelf deal with Europe but a bespoke one. Nevertheless it is still far from clear, perhaps even to May herself, what will emerge once she has finished with her hammer and chisel.

Related: Restricting immigration will be at heart of Brexit deal, Theresa May says

All the choices that follow from Brexit are difficult – and many of them are very bad ones indeed

Related: Has Theresa May really thrown in her lot with the Brexiteers? | Jackie Ashley

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