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Theresa May was denied the cold comfort of a respectable defeat, let alone the dignity of a near run thing. As I write these words in the early hours of Wednesday morning—scarcely two weeks

( _ two weeks _ !) before the day on which the UK is due to quit the EU— no one, not May, not even the mighty Barnier, knows what shape Brexit will take. Incompetence has consequences. Some

of May’s blunders can be explained, none can be explained away. Her government misunderstood post-referendum Britain, while barely bothering to understand Brussels at all. It was bullied

into triggering the Brexit countdown—a move that handed the negotiating advantage to the EU—without having put together a credible plan. Theresa May _ had _ sketched out some of what she

wanted (and quite a bit of what she did not), but the Lancaster House speech in which she set out her vision of Britain’s future relationship with the EU was notable mainly for its

grandiloquent emptiness. There was an embarrassment of adjectives—comprehensive, bold, ambitious—and an embarrassing lack of detail. Her words were little more than a wish list, prepared

without any regard for the legal and political realities of the union with which she now had to negotiate.   Brexit was never going to be easy, either politically or economically. Brexiteers

who argued otherwise ignored the contradiction between their (accurate) claims that the European project was above all political, and their assertion that, say, German car manufacturers

with a valuable export market in the UK would nudge Brussels in the direction of a bespoke deal with Blighty. The paramountcy of politics meant that preserving the integrity of the EU’s _

acquis _ would weigh more heavily than accommodating exporters to the sceptic isle. Equally, Brexiteers underestimated the difficulty of loosening well over four decades of deepening ties

without doing too much damage either to the UK’s ability to trade with the EU or to its role as a business-friendly launchpad for international enterprises looking to penetrate the huge

market across the Channel. For the UK to disengage itself from the trudge towards political integration while hanging onto the benefits of economic integration would be tricky. It would call

for a scalpel not an axe. Unfortunately, May has chosen to abandon much of the required surgery. She has focused on goods (where the EU-27 runs a healthy surplus with Britain) rather than

services, where the UK has a strong edge. To no small extent, the latter would be left to fend for themselves, with results that won’t be pretty. Those, however, who have pressed for a ‘no

deal’ hard Brexit (the clean break, the ‘WTO option’—pick your euphemism) are reaching for the axe. The electorate won’t forget the economic pain that will ensue. The version of Brexit

spurned last night, a humiliating withdrawal agreement followed almost inevitably by a succession of surrenders as Britain, playing a very weak hand, tried to settle its long-term

relationship with the EU, would also have played poorly with the voters, but its full effect on the economy—deterioration rather than a collapse, cancer rather than a stroke—would have taken

longer to sink in, possibly fostering a degree of complacency that might—if they were extraordinarily lucky— have eased the Tories’ pain in the next election. By contrast, hard Brexit will

undoubtedly mean hard Labour. And hard Brexit is still the default option. Parliament can vote to reject a ‘no deal’ Brexit, but without some semblance of a plan that the EU might accept,

the best MPs can probably hope for is Brussels’ conceding a brief postponement of the day of reckoning. Certainly, the decision could be taken to walk away from Brexit by revoking the

application to leave, or the government could try yet again to revive May’s spavined deal, but the best option, by a very long way, and one that Barnier has said could fly, would be to

remain in the Single Market—the EEA—as a member of EFTA on the same basis as that currently enjoyed by Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein. To describe this as an off-the-shelf solution is an

exaggeration (not least given the complications surrounding the Irish border), but, compared with anything else (apart, I suppose, from abandoning Brexit) it is likely to be _ relatively _

straightforward process. It appears to be acceptable to the EU and, after some hesitation, to EFTA (which would gain considerable clout from the UK’s accession) as well. Adopting the ‘Norway

option’ would mean, in essence, that the UK could retain the economic advantages arising out of its participation in the Single Market while extricating itself from the EU’s political

project of ‘ever closer union’. What’s more, Britain would regain the right to cut its own trade deals with the world beyond the EU. This would be Brexit, and not only in name. Yes, there

are aspects of this option that a good number of Brexiteers would find galling. To take some examples, Norway is a rule-taker, if far less of one than often maintained. Freedom of movement

would be slightly diluted, but would survive (there is an ‘emergency brake’ that can unilaterally be applied, but, except in the case of tiny Liechtenstein, where permanent restrictions have

been put in place, it has never been tested) and there’s no denying that directly or indirectly, the UK would be sending money the EU’s way. For all that, Brexiteers must remember that

theirs was a narrow victory. A Brexit that will endure without perpetuating the worst of the bitterness that has scarred British politics since June 23, 2016 must acknowledge the concerns of

the 48 per cent. A Brexit that looks a lot like what many Brits thought the ‘common market’ was going to become has a good shot of doing just that. In 1972, Norway rejected membership of

the EC by a 53.5-46.5 margin. In 1994, the same year it had signed up for the EEA, Norwegians turned down membership of the EU by a margin remarkably close to that notorious 52-48.  In 2018,

nearly a quarter of a century after Norway took the Norway option, a poll revealed that only 16 per cent of Norwegians wanted to join the EU. It’s unlikely to have been an outlier. There’s

a lesson there.