Every member of Theresa May’s Brexit Cabinet sub-committee has committed to the UK diverging from the EU and taking back control of its laws, research by Change Britain has found. As they meet at Chequers today to discuss the Brexit end state, ministers will doubtless be under pressure from Remainers, Jeremy Heywood and Olly Robbins to back a convergence plan in which nothing really changes. As these quotes below show, that is simply not compatible with their own stated public positions. There can be no backsliding from this…

Theresa May

‘What we will be able to do is to make our own laws. Parliament will make our laws’ (Sky News, August 2017, link)

Karen Bradley

‘We will, once again, be in total control of our own laws’ (Karen Bradley’s website, link)

Greg Clark

‘One of the freedoms that will come from Brexit will be to enable us to determine our own view of [state aid rules] rather than having to comply with others’ (CityAM, October 2016, link).

David Davis

‘We start at the same position, but we will manage the divergence… Of course we will diverge, we will do things our own way.’ (Politico, September 2017, link)

Liam Fox

‘If you cannot make your own laws, if you cannot control your own borders, you are not an independent, sovereign nation and I want to live in an independent sovereign nation’ (Telegraph, January 2016, link).

Michael Gove

‘Outside the EU we take back control of our laws. At the end of the two-year transition period the UK will be able to pass laws that strengthen our economy and enhance our environment, with full freedom to diverge from EU law on the Single Market and Customs Union.’ (Telegraph, December 2017, link).

Philip Hammond

‘We are going to leave the European Union. To repatriate our laws. To assert the supremacy of our courts.’ (Conservative Party, October 2016, link).

Boris Johnson

‘Over time we will be able to diverge from the great accumulated conglomerate, to act with regulatory freedom’ (Telegraph, September 2017, link)

David Lidington

‘Of course we will have the power to choose for ourselves whether or not to diverge once we have left the supranational legal structures of the EU.’ (BBC News, January 2018, link)

Amber Rudd

‘We will not have truly left the European Union if we are not in control of our own laws’ (Amber Rudd’s website, link)

Gavin Williamson

At Cabinet backed ‘Britain to retain the right to diverge from EU rules and regulations to make it easier to strike trade deals with third party countries and free the UK from EU red tape’ (Telegraph, December 2017, link).