BORIS Johnson is right. That’s not a sentence I often find myself writing, and I don’t mean that the bouffant foreign secretary is right about Donald Trump winning the Nobel Prize.

Mr Johnson is right that Theresa May’s Brexit compromise, the New Customs Partnership (NCP), is “crazy”. It is. Trying to be both in and out of the EU customs union has already been rejected by Brussels as “magical thinking”. It would also be bureaucratic – doubling up on customs checks in and out of the UK – and still wouldn’t give the UK freedom to negotiate trade deals with other parties.

But there my endorsement of Mr Johnson comes to an abrupt halt. His preferred option is hard Brexit, or “have cake and eat it” in which we basically tell the EU to allow us access to the single market without accepting the rules. There’s not a snowball’s chance of this being acceptable to the other 27 members of the European Union, for the obvious reason that it would be curtains for the European Union itself.

Brexit: UK Government suffers further defeats over flagship legislation

Nor is the other Brexiter unicorn, “maximum facilitation” (max fac) going to work. Max fac pretends that technology can in some way make borders disappear. It cannot. Number plate recognition and clever software can’t wish away the paraphernalia of national isolationism, which is what Brexit is really about. Taking back control means creating borders: customs checks, tariffs, regulatory compliance and restrictions on movement of people.

However, there is another more sensible option than NCP, max fac, clean Brexit, customs union-minus or any of the other attempts to reinvent the EU wheel. This alternative would allow Britain to leave the European Union, the Common Agricultural Policy, the European Court and all the things that some people insist are unacceptable impositions on British sovereignty – and yet suffer minimal economic damage in the process. Unfortunately, this option is rejected by the UK Government and the Opposition Labour Party.

It is of course, the European Economic Area (EEA). This was a remarkable achievement of constructive diplomacy in 1994 and allowed countries like Norway to be members of the European single market without being members of the European Union. The EEA is an extension of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), which was actually a British creation back in 1960 when we were locked out of the EEC. Members of EFTA are allowed to segue into the European single market, and gain all the benefits of free trade in services as well as goods. Yet members of the EEA are not members of the customs union, which means that they can strike trade deals independently of the European Union. What’s not to like?

Brexit: UK Government suffers further defeats over flagship legislation

If Britain has to leave the EU, the EEA is the obvious destination. The customs union largely covers only trade in goods, whereas the single market includes free trade in services, which make up 80 per cent of the UK economy. It is the ultimate free trade arrangement and leads the world in terms of the abolition of non-tariff barriers. The EEA is the customs union of the 21st century. It addresses the real economy, not some retro metal-bashing fantasy. And the great thing for Brexit supporters is that it side-steps all the supposedly “super-state” aspects of the European Union. EEA countries don’t have to subscribe to “ever closer union” or to dictates from the European Court on non-trade matters like justice.

It would seem the obvious option for the Labour Party which says it wants a Brexit that guarantees jobs and prevents economic damage. But perversely, Labour opposes the EEA and Jeremy Corbyn ordered Labour peers to abstain on the latest Lords amendment allowing the Commons a vote on the EEA. This makes precisely zero sense. Labour has been gradually edging towards soft Brexit, but only so far as adopting the customs union, which is possibly the worst option.

For her part, Theresa May considers the EEA unacceptable because it is supposedly an engine of mass immigration. One of the conditions of having free movement of services – lawyers, architects, information professionals and the like – is that it requires freedom of movement of people with these skills. At any rate, you can’t allow governments to use immigration restrictions as a kind of protectionism. But in the Tory universe, free movement means lots of migrants coming and living off the fat (ha ha) of British benefits, and is therefore to be rejected.

But for Labour to oppose free movement is surely bonkers. Some on the Left argue that the single market restricts the powers of governments to run nationalised industries, but this is simply wrong. Lots of countries have nationalised utilities – like France and Germany, whose energy and rail industries are in public ownership. Indeed, in Scotland we have had the daft situation where a state-owned Dutch railway was running (for profit) our privatised Scottish rail franchise. There are EU rules against anti-competitive activities, but this does not mean that public ownership is ruled out by the single market.

Brexit: UK Government suffers further defeats over flagship legislation

I have the horrible suspicion that Labour opposes the EEA because it too is afraid of the shadow of immigration. Mr Corbyn worries that all those Labour Brexit voters will desert the party if it joins the single market and allows foreigners in. But this was always a Brexit canard. Free movement is the right to seek work, not a right of permanent residence. Under the 2004 Directive, EU Citizens only have a right of residence for three months and can thereafter be deported if they become “an unreasonable burden on the social assistance system”.

How can people not know this, two years since the EU referendum? Why isn’t Labour making the case for the EEA with the SNP? No, it isn’t as good as EU membership because EEA means accepting the rules of the single market without having any say in the framing of them. You also have to pay for membership. But it’s clearly the least worst Brexit option. Most voters now accept that we are going to have to reach some reasoned compromise with the EU. For god’s sake will someone not give Britain the option of making the best of a bad job?