Since the June 8 election in Britain, which saw the Prime
Minister lose her majority in Parliament, there has been much
speculation as to whether the British government would continue
down the road of a "hard" Brexit or would move to a
softer version of the "no deal is better than a bad deal"
position that dominated the headlines for much of the spring. In
the past few weeks, while continental Europe focused on other
issues and vacations, the political class and the media in Britain
were left to read between the lines as competing visions of Brexit,
with a heavy dose of political maneuvering in the Conservative
Party, emerged from the Cabinet.
On August 15, the British government issued the first of a
promised series of policy papers, this one (in many respects,
aspirational) proposed that Britain join a new form of customs
union described as a "continued close association." This
untried arrangement with the EU customs union, which would mirror
the customs union of
