This Blog will not comment in detail yet on May’s much trumpeted speech. Except to say this. Brexiteers regard Britain’s relationship with the EU as primarily about trade. European politics, outside security issues, are something to be shot of. The problem is that EU sees the political union and its associated free movements as an absolute priority and trade as the icing on the cake. But the integrity of the union comes first. When you disentangle the purple rhetoric about shared values and stuff, these two positions are irreconcilable.
So long as May puts the unity of the Tory party above the interests of her country and keeps the hard Brexiteers in her cabinet, the danger of the cliff edge remains.