Welcome to the Guardian’s weekly Brexit briefing, a summary of developments as Britain moves – ever more purposefully – towards the EU exit. If you’d like to receive it as a weekly email, do please sign up here.

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The big picture

The pushback has begun. As the PM headed off to Denmark and the Netherlands (for talks, not negotiations) to try to persuade two traditional EU allies of the virtues of a hard Brexit, resistance is starting to stir at home.

First to open fire after the Conservative party conference, at which Theresa May gave the firm impression she will prioritise sovereignty and immigration controls over single market membership, was Britain’s business community.

In an open letter to the prime minister, the heads of four major business groups, including the Confederation of British Industry, said any Brexit model that denied UK firms full access to the single market should be ruled out immediately:

Leaving the EU without any preferential trade arrangement and defaulting to standard WTO rules would … do serious and lasting damage to the UK economy. The UK voted to leave the EU but not to cause living standards to decline. We want a Brexit that safeguards future prosperity for everyone across the UK.

Next came parliament – the body Brexit was supposed to make more sovereign. Now an unprecedented cross-party alliance of MPs – Tory, Lib Dem, Labour, SNP and Greens – has formed to demand that May give parliament a vote on the government’s Brexit stance before negotiations start.

They point out that while 52% of British voters chose to leave the EU, they did not also choose to leave the market with which Britain does 44% of its trade, and that parliament cannot legitimately be bypassed on such a momentous decision.

The PM authorised a statement saying this was nothing more than “an attempt to thwart the will of the British people”, and in parliament the Brexit minister, David Davis, also dismissed calls for a parliamentary vote from the likes of the former Labour leader Ed Miliband and former Lib Dem deputy prime minister Nick Clegg, who argued:

On the basis of what constitutional principle do you believe that the prime minister can now arrogate to herself the exclusive right to interpret what Brexit means, impose it upon the country, rather than protect the rightful role of scrutiny and approval of this house?

Davis said those arguing for the Commons to decide negotiating terms “cannot tell the difference between accountability and micromanagement” and promised MPs would get plenty of chances to debate the issue. (Mind you, he also said there was “no downside to Brexit, only considerable upside”, and the negotiating cards were “incredibly stacked our way”, so you may believe what you like. Other than that, it was basically what he’s said before.)

Also last week, sterling plunged to a 31-year low – featuring an alarming “flash crash” – amid mounting fears among currency traders of the longer-term economic impact of an eventual hard Brexit. The soft-Brexit chancellor, Philip Hammond, was forced to reassure not only the City but also Wall Street, which were alarmed by both the anti-immigrant tone of the Tory conference and the possible loss of EU “passporting” rights if the UK leaves the single market.

Hammond said the home secretary Amber Rudd’s remarks that migrants should not “take the jobs that British people should do” – along with a proposal (since withdrawn) to force firms to publish how many foreign workers they employed – were not aimed at the financial sector, adding:

I can reassure people in the financial services sector, in all parts of it, that we are listening to what they’re saying and we’re understanding the positions that different subsectors have about their needs. The government is a pro-business government, strongly supportive of open markets, free markets, open economies, free trade.

The view from Europe

European leaders queued up last week to ramp up their Brexit rhetoric after the PM’s apparent determination to head for a hard Brexit. Here is a sample of their choicest declarations, beginning with the French president, François Hollande, who said that if the UK were allowed to stay in the single market while curbing EU migration:

The fundamental principles of the EU will be threatened … Other countries would want to leave to get the supposed advantages without the obligations … There must be a threat, there must be a risk, there must be a price.

The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and the European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, underlined the point, with Merkel saying in Berlin:

If we don’t insist that full access to the single market is tied to complete acceptance of the four basic freedoms, then a process will spread across Europe whereby everyone does and is allowed what they want.

What matters to the EU 27 now is its institutional integrity, upholding the four basic freedoms (movement of goods, services, capital and labour) and displaying single market solidarity. Whatever deal Britain gets cannot be seen to jeopardise that.

Meanwhile, back in Westminster

Whatever Davis said, hard-boiled Brexit is difficult to swallow in SW1, even among pro-leave Tory MPs. Pro-Brexit MP Stephen Phillips has applied for an urgent debate in an attempt to prevent the government from negotiating the terms for Britain’s EU exit without consulting parliament, calling any move to bypass MPs “fundamentally undemocratic and unconstitutional”.

Anna Soubry, practically the only Tory MP still carrying the torch for remain, is backing him, and has met Miliband to discuss concerns about “a rush to hard Brexit, and the voice of members of parliament being completely lost in that rush”.

There was gentle mutiny on the airwaves too. Dominic Grieve, the former Conservative attorney general, said MPs should be given the chance to vote on triggering article 50. And Andrew Tyrie, the Conservative MP and chair of the Treasury committee, told the same programme he also thought MPs should debate the government’s negotiating position:

It seems to me British interests will be best served by an early and full and detailed explanation from the government of what its negotiating position is before it embarks on those discussions … What has never been discussed in any depth is what we arrive at. I think there’s a majority in parliament for doing that.

Across the green benches, one of the most notable appointments in Jeremy Corbyn’s lengthy reshuffle was the shadow Brexit secretary, Keir Starmer, a former director of public prosecutions. Starmer, touted as a future Labour leader, said his first priority would be to push for more parliamentary scrutiny of Brexit:

There has to be democratic grip of the process. At the moment, the PM is trying to manoeuvre without any scrutiny. That is why the terms on which we are going to negotiate absolutely have to be put to a vote in the house.

He also put some clear water between his own views on immigration and those of the Labour leadership, which has refused to put a cap on numbers:

It should be reduced by making sure we have the skills in this country that are needed for the jobs that need to be done. We have to be open to adjustments of the freedom of movement rules and how they apply to this country. We have to be shrewd and careful.

You should also know that:

• Concerned at the possible introduction of a post-Brexit “hard border” between Northern Ireland and the Republic, Britain is seeking to shift the frontline of immigration controls to Ireland’s ports and airports.

• The retail industry warned prices of consumer staples such as food and clothes will shoot up if the UK government fails to negotiate a good trading deal with the EU.
• The government has dropped a highly controversial proposal first mentioned by Rudd to force businesses to reveal how many foreign staff they employ.
• The London School of Economics said it had been told clearly by the Foreign Office that non-British academics would not be asked to advise the government on Brexit; the FCO said this is not the case.
• Homophobic attacks in the UK rose 147% in the three months after the Brexit referendum vote.
• The government will argue that parliament should not be allowed to vote on article 50 – implementing Brexit – because that would mean ministers would be prevented from “giving effect to the will of the people”, according to legal arguments lodged in a case to be heard at the high court this week.
  

Read this

In the Guardian, Stockholm-based journalist Ylva Elvis Nilsson explains very clearly why Britain will not get both full single market access and controls over immigration (and it’s not about punishment):

The other EU countries believe it is in their national interest to safeguard the single market. Why? Because of jobs. Millions of jobs have been created because European companies have been able to buy and sell freely to the richest consumers in the world, in the largest market in the world. Creating the single market was a painful process … A lot of politicians had to return home to their voters and admit that things would have to change. Allowing one country today to dictate its own conditions while being part of this market would probably lead to the unravelling of the whole package of hard-won compromises. And that is not going to happen.

In the New Statesman, George Eaton argues that Brexit began as a libertarian project, “born on the Conservatives’ fringes … Its proponents were economic liberals and fiscal conservatives”. Now, says Eaton, it has, under Theresa May’s government, become a statist one:

For the prime minister, the leave vote was not merely a mandate to exit from the EU but to reshape domestic policy ... The UK will now acquire the control that Thatcher craved. But Brussels’ social frontiers will be reimposed domestically. Free marketeers can lament their failure. But they know the tide of ideas is against them. The referendum would never have been won on a platform of open markets and open borders. May’s government is intent on controlling both.

Back in the Guardian, Jonathan Freedland asks who is going to speak for the 48% who voted remain, now that Britain seems to be hurtling towards “extreme Brexit”:

They – we – are not looking for a champion who will pretend that the referendum never happened, but one who will fight for a Brexit that does not deprive us of all we cherished in our relationship with Europe. It means arguing for a sane, practical deal that serves, rather than harms, our national interest.

And for anyone coming to this whole Brexit thing rather late, the Economist has a spectacularly complete survey of pretty much where things stand.

Tweet of the week

The redoubtable Ian Dunt, the editor of politics.co.uk, on David Davis:

Tory MP says Europe need us more than we need them, on tariffs. They are still saying this godawful nonsense as if it means something.

— Ian Dunt (@IanDunt) October 10, 2016