Good morning. No, “surrender squad” is not an off-brand Marvel remake: it is, according to the Mail on Sunday and the Conservative former Brexit negotiator Lord Frost, the only way to describe an “all-powerful team of more than 100 civil servants being assembled to run the UK’s negotiations with Brussels” with the goal of reversing Brexit by stealth.
This may come as news to the Labour government, which has generally appeared petrified of any move that could be represented as a betrayal of Brexit, and included in its manifesto red lines on “no return to the single market, the customs union, or freedom of movement” – that is, the things that make the EU the EU.
