Brexit: Four reasons to be cheerful as we go into 2018 – and what must happen next

When we all return from our Christmas break in January, there will be less than fifteen months remaining before the UK’s scheduled date of departure from the European Union. So now seems like a good time to step back and look at where things stand in the Brexit process.

Clearly, the whole undertaking has been much more complex and difficult than anyone could have known during the referendum campaign, and every day seems to bring more news of further complications. From nuclear safety to maintaining an open border in Northern Ireland, from financial services to manufacturing supply chains, from aviation to the NHS: Brexit poses countless questions to which our government is yet to produce any convincing answers.

And yet for committed pro-Europeans like myself there are growing signs, here and there, of the green grass shoots of hope starting to appear:

1. Opinion polls show our arguments are starting to cut through, with increasing numbers of people agreeing that Brexit might not be the right choice for the country.

2. During the General Election, Theresa May ran on a clear pledge to deliver a hard, destructive Brexit and the result was the loss of her parliamentary majority – hardly a ringing endorsement, by anyone’s standards.

3. We saw the architect of Article 50, Lord Kerr, making it clear in a speech organised by Open Britain that Brexit is a reversible process if the British people decide that’s what they want.

4. Elected MPs across all the major political parties, including eleven brave Conservatives, delivered a stinging defeat to the government over Amendment 7 to the EU Withdrawal Bill.

While it was MPs who ultimately voted in favour of this amendment – ensuring that the final terms of withdrawal of the UK from the EU must be voted upon by MPs through a full Act of Parliament – the real success story was the work of the grassroots campaign co-ordinated by pro-European groups like Open Britain.

They helped raise awareness of the amendment, they lobbied fiercely in favour of its passage, and most importantly of all, they helped tens of thousands of people in every constituency of the UK to send letters and e-mails to their local MPs asking them to vote in favour of it.

The vote in Parliament was as important for what it signals as what it says – Theresa May won’t be allowed to have this all her own way.

So there is reason to be cheerful – but the fight is still very far from over.

The government is still refusing to acknowledge the basic fact that wrenching the UK out of the Single Market and the Customs Union will drive our economy off a cliff.

Ministers are still trying to pretend that they can have all the benefits of our current EU membership, with none of the responsibilities.

And the Cabinet is still full of chancers and charmers like David Davis, Boris Johnson and Liam Fox, who continue to try and ignore the facts even as they stare them in the face. The pro-European side of the argument has certainly gained momentum over the last few months, but it will all be for nothing if we fail to keep up the pressure.

A year and a half after the referendum result, the future is far from clear. Government may have limped over the first hurdle of ‘sufficient progress’ in its negotiations with the EU, but it now moves on to the much more difficult and complex question of our future relationship.

It is more important than ever to hold them to account over the promises that were made: remember it was David Davis himself who told us we could have the ‘exact same benefits’ as we have now.

As it becomes clearer and clearer that doing so is impossible, everyone has the right to keep an open mind about whether or not this is the right path for the country.

Heidi Alexander is Labour MP for Lewisham East and a leading supporter of Open Britain