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Ignore the pessimist Remoaners desperate for Brexit to fail – having our cake and eating it is a perfectly achievable goal

Of course our policy on cake should be pro-having it and pro-eating it. We haven’t even started the Brexit talks yet. Now is the time to be aiming high.

The phrase was photographed on notes being carried out of Downing Street by an aide and has been mocked by the pessimists who are determined our EU talks should fail.

But having our cake and eating it — being part of a common market, not a common government — is a perfectly achievable goal.

The EU should also have its cake and eat it. It should preserve free trade with the UK — which after Brexit will be its biggest export market — while being able to rely on British support as it pursues its goal of political union.

There is no shortage of cake. It’s not as though any gain by one side must be a loss for the other. Each side should want the other to succeed. Prosperous neighbours make good customers.

Our objective in the Brexit talks should be a deal that benefits our European allies as well as ourselves.

Will the French, as those notes said, be “difficult”? Only in the sense they will look to their own interests, as we do.

We have had a semi-friendly rivalry within and outside the EU. But in the end France wants to sell cheese and wine to Britain, just as we want to sell financial services to France.

The notes were carried by an aide — a good, committed aide — to the Conservative Party’s Vice-Chairman for International Affairs.

His job is to maintain relations with friendly parties around the world, not to talk to governments. He is not part of the Brexit negotiating team and knows no inside information. But he’ll have wanted to give his visitors a sense of the mood in Britain.

If those notes reflected their meeting, he has done his job. His guests, Dutch liberal politicians, will have left with the impression Britain intends to get the best possible deal from the EU while being fair to its partners.

They will be in no doubt that we will no longer obey EU judges. But they will have gathered too that we want the freest possible trade compatible with living under our own laws.

No state secrets were revealed but a party with whom British Conservatives enjoy warm relations was given a sense of what people in Britain think. The “gaffe” in fact showed the system working.

So what will the eventual deal look like? 

There are various ways in which a country can have free trade with the EU.

The closest relationship is membership of the European Economic Area, like Norway. The trouble is, this requires countries to accept EU rules in a number of areas including free movement of people, which is why it has been ruled out.

Next closest is membership of the European Free Trade Association, like Switzerland. This is a far better deal. Although Switzerland does harmonise its policies with those of the EU in some areas, it does so as an independent country, through bilateral treaties.

Looser still is an Association Agreement. The EU has these with most non-EU states in the region, most recently Ukraine and Moldova. These states have unrestricted trade with the EU, though not usually free movement of people.

Finally, there is a straightforward free trade agreement, such as those enjoyed by Canada and Peru. These can cover services as well as goods.

Obviously, Britain will not precisely mimic anyone else. When, during the referendum, Remainers kept asking whether we’d be “like” Canada or “like” Iceland or “like” Guernsey, they revealed the silliness of the question.