Welcome to the Guardian's weekly Brexit briefing, a summary of developments as the UK stumbles to the EU door marked "exit". If you would like to receive it as a weekly early morning email, please sign up here. You can listen to our latest Brexit Means podcast here. Also: producing the Guardian's independent, in-depth journalism takes a lot of time and money. We do it because we believe our perspective matters – and it may be your perspective too. If you value our Brexit coverage, please become a Guardian Supporter and help make our future more secure. Thank you. The big picture Days before Theresa May's major Brexit speech in Florence, her foreign secretary grabbed all the headlines, setting out in a 4,200-word screed the "glorious" future that awaits Britain as it "succeeds mightily" in its great post-Brexit enterprise. The article did not go down a storm. Aside from whatever jockeying inside the Tory party it signals (the home secretary accused him of "backseat driving"), Boris Johnson's article contained multiple contradictions, misrepresentations and simplifications about Brexit.
The Guardian called it "a masterpiece of doublespeak and smarm", its promises on the deal Britain is likely to secure "palpably false" and the foreign secretary's whole vision of post-Brexit Britain founded on a "ludicrous fantasy". The Financial Times (paywall) said it was a "naked, self-serving powerplay" that was "at best facile, at worst dishonest". (The Telegraph, which published it, hailed it as "at last, a positive and bold vision" for Britain after the EU.) Much of the criticism focused on Johnson's revival – and spirited defence – of the widely disproved claim that the UK would have £350m a week extra available for public spending after Brexit, described as a "clear misuse of official statistics" by Sir David Norgrove, the head of the national statistics watchdog.
But what he had to say about Britain's past and future relations with the EU was if anything even more misleading. Johnson says Brexit presents "obvious opportunities" (although he names none) to fix Britain's economic problems, improve its schools and infrastructure, solve its housing crisis, become a research and high-tech giant – none of which EU membership has ever prevented. "Taking back control" in these areas is meaningless, because none was ever given away. Twice, in infrastructure and productivity, he compares Britain unfavourably with France and Germany, both EU members who were oddly unconstrained by the "gigantic and ever-tightening cat's cradle of red tape" he complains of. Johnson also managed to promise that "our system of standards will remain absolutely flush with the EU's", while simultaneously pledging that after Brexit, the UK will take the lead on global deregulation. So: broad-brush brio, precious little reality. Scariest, though, was the extension of Johnson's familiar Brussels-scapegoating to those who believe in the EU – notably the "young people with the 12 stars lipsticked on their faces … with genuinely split allegiances". That was nasty, and dangerous. The view from Europe The foreign secretary's intervention has only reinforced the impression on the continent that Britain still does not know what kind of Brexit it wants and is, for the time being, engaged in a destructive argument with itself. Like the prime minister, Johnson believes – or so his article said – that Brexit must mean leaving the single market, customs union and jurisdiction of European court of justice. He also seemed to accept the need for a financial settlement with the EU. He had nothing to say, however, on the necessity of a transition period – and he clearly rejected the notion of paying for access to the single market after March 2019. He is backed in that by other Brexit hardliners such as John Redwood. Unfortunately, the government in recent weeks had seemed to be coming round to the Treasury view that the best option is a multi-year transition period during which much – including Britain's EU budget payments – would remain more or less the same while the terms of a longer-term relationship is worked out. May's Florence speech was supposed to explain all that. But following Johnson's intervention, who would forgive the EU27 fearing the prime minister's version of Britain's preferred Brexit script may not be the final edit? Frustrated EU politicians made their feelings plain. Gianni Pitella, the leader of the socialist bloc in the European parliament, said Johnson was "embarrassing his country once again, jeopardising the Brexit negotiations and insulting the intelligence of the British people". He added: This appears to be yet another twist in the internal warfare within the Conservative party. It does the UK no credit and no service in the wider world. I fear the British government is heading towards the Brexit rocks. Meanwhile, back in Westminster Westminster is again emptying out, soon after the return from the summer break. But while some MPs are heading to the seaside, this is definitely not a holiday – it's party conference time. During a three-week recess the Lib Dems, Labour and Conservatives are gathering, respectively, in Bournemouth, Brighton and Manchester, to hobnob with activists and shape future policies. The Lib Dems are, as is traditional, going first, and as ever with the party, much of the talk at their conference is going to be about Brexit. Since an underwhelming election for the party, which saw their tally of MPs nudge up from nine to 12, the largely Brexit-focused Tim Farron has been replaced by the veteran Vince Cable. He is seeking to present the Lib Dems as a more general voice of centrist, middle-of-the-road good sense in a chaotic world. In a round of interviews before his leader's speech he insisted he could become PM. "You've got the governing party, the Conservatives, more or less in open civil war. You've got the Labour party in suppressed civil war. You've got extreme polarisation – hard right on one side, hard left on the other," he told the BBC. Brexit is, however, still centre stage, and Cable is sticking to the promise of a new referendum. However, he is presenting it as something new: a "first referendum on the facts, once we know the outcome of the referendum". Will voters appreciate the distinction? Who knows. But as ever with the Lib Dems on Brexit, at least their message is consistent. You should also know: Read these: In the Observer, Philip Inman writes that even German carmakers will not save Britain from a hard Brexit – because in the EU as in the UK, politics now trumps economics: David Davis falls into the camp that still believes economics will overtake politics in the final straight, allowing his team to extract the kind of business-friendly deal, with an extended transition period, that the CBI is calling for. But why does he think that German business leaders will put trade with the UK above the cohesion of the remaining 27 countries, which serves their purpose much more than keeping borders open with the UK? Clamping down on free movement wouldn't fit, either, with [French president Emmanuel Macron's] attempts to deepen the structures of the EU and make it function more as one country, or at least create a eurozone that becomes more of a unitary entity. The UK's plan to quit the EU, with cherries picked and borders blocked, is peripheral to this debate. Prepare for a clean Brexit. And in the Guardian, Rafael Behr says the prime minister is insensitive to the plight of the 2.9 million EU citizens in the UK and explains – movingly – why that is a problem: Brexiters see the issue in bureaucratic terms – moving people between legal rubrics. Most will not see it in terms of identity because they don't see an EU passport as a credible vehicle for any emotional sense of belonging. If they did, they would have voted remain. Anyone from a migrant background will appreciate that there is no easy separation of official status and belonging. Even those who, like me, were born in the UK to immigrant parents, and have had British passports from birth, carry a sense of the permission that was once granted. EU free movement conferred a right to relocate. And, whether Brexiters like it or not, that implied a right to belong in perpetuity. So it is not a technical adjustment, this decision to downgrade the status of people who took jobs, married, had children, all on the basis of their old status. Leaving the European Union will negate a right that millions of people exercised as the foundation for their lives in this country. Any claim that they cannot be wounded by it is absurd. It cuts deeper than many leavers realise. Tweet of the week Ian Dunt points to the real problem behind Boris's £350m smokescreen: | 
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Boris Johnson's Telegraph article was described by the FT as 'at best facile, at worst dishonest'. Photograph: Brendan Mcdermid/Reuters 
