And again: just what does 'Brexit means Brexit' mean?

“Brexit means Brexit,” Theresa May and the backers of Britain leaving the European Union keep assuring us.

Like a lot of slogans, it’s pretty meaningless. Does it mean leaving the Single Market and Customs Union too? Or just the EU institutions themselves? A hard Brexit in other words, or a soft one? 

No one’s saying, least of all May.

Well, if she isn’t saying, she’s certainly been hinting of late. People voted to get control of immigration, she tells us, and I suspect she’s right. You can’t tell from the referendum results, because it wasn’t mentioned in the question, but listening to the conversations in the media or simply in the streets, it’s clear a great many people voted Leave to put an end to free movement of people into Britain. A great many of them are worried that Poles are taking their jobs, or they simply don’t like hearing Polish on the streets – “this is England and people should speak English”.

They forget that at one time a lot of Celts must have resented hearing Anglo-Saxon spoken in this same green and pleasant land. But then they probably wouldn’t care even if they did remember.

May has been playing to this particular group, with promises about control of immigration. That’s not possible without a hard Brexit including departure from the single market, since membership of market requires acceptance of freedom of movement of EU citizens. So, though she hasn’t made it completely explicit, for May it seems that “Brexit means hard Brexit”. That would leave Britain having to deal with the EU on the same terms as any other member of the World Trade Organisation, except for any more favourable terms it could extract by negotiation. Tough, considering that the EU is the world’s biggest trading bloc, and right on Britain’s doorstep.

Business isn’t keen on this option.

Still, the uncertainty continues. May isn’t committing herself to hard Brexit. She claims she’s playing her cards close to her chest and doesn’t want to reveal her negotiating stance to other EU leaders. Many of us have wondered whether it might be because she doesn’t have much of an idea what her stance is. Basically, she can’t get off the fence.

Well, yesterday we had the excellent news that car manufacturer Nissan would be building two more models at its plant in Sunderland, in North East England. That secures 7000 jobs in the plant itself and many others in the supply chain. It doesn’t just protect jobs in a region that desperately needs them, it provides new ones.

A matter for nothing but celebration.

However, it’s odd. The Nissan Chief Executive Carlos Ghosn made it clear this summer that Nissan wouldn’t be investing any further in its UK operations if it couldn’t guarantee continued easy access to the European Single Market.

Carlos Ghosn leaving Downing Street after meeting Theresa May

The British government has let it be known that it gave ‘assurances’ to Nissan before the new investments were announced. But, in typical May economical-with-information style, no one’s saying what those assurances were. Was it a guarantee that Britain would remain in the Single Market? A soft Brexit, in other words? That seems to contradict the position she’s been taking for several weeks. And does it depend on her? Doesn’t it require the agreement of the other EU states?

Alternatively, has May assured Nissan that Britain would either remain in the Single Market or compensate the car manufacturer for any financial loss it incurs as a result of leaving? That would be costly. She can’t offer such a deal to Nissan and not to other car makers. She can’t offer it to car makers and not to other exporters.

We continue to live in interesting times. There are a great many more questions than answers. And one of the more intriguing is still what on Earth does “Brexit means Brexit” really mean?