As we speed towards what appears increasingly like our last festive season inside the EU for a while, The Economist describes next week's election as our nightmare before Christmas. It is a depressing picture of a divided country heading for more division as the electorate faces a choice between two extremes.
The article says Labour has moved further to the left since 2017 while the Tories under the sociopath Johnson has shifted ever rightward albeit in a confused path which favours both more state intervention and less regulation. Not so much Singapore on Thames as Stoke-on-Trent as The Sunday Times put it recently, and circa 1960.
Both the Economist and The Telegraph look towards next year's trade talks, anticipating a Tory victory. They both make use of the Twitter thread of Mujtaba Rahman that I posted about recently HERE. The Economist explicitly refers to Rahman in a piece questioning whether Brexit can really be done, while Pieter Cleppe in The Telegraph doesn't mention him at all, although it's obvious where his story comes from because it follows Rahman's arguments exactly.
Mr Cleppe writes for a different audience and believes the EU are chasing unicorns with what he thinks are totally unreasonable demands for level playing fields, budget contributions and access to UK coastal waters. This might play well for retired Brigadiers in the home counties who think we still rule the waves, but it's a false premise. We will see how unreasonable they are very soon.
Our weak position will be even more exposed in future trade talks than it has been up to now. The reasons for this are set out clearly in the Economist article, one of them being the ridiculous deadline we have once more set ourselves or rather Johnson has set for us.
Our dim leader has not learned anything from the futility of creating deadlines, artificial or otherwise. They invariably pile pressure on the weaker party. His boast of getting the WA reopened conveniently overlooks the fact it was simply going back to the EU's original proposal - the one that two PM's (one being him) said they could never accept. He also keeps using the archaic phrase that we are leaving 'whole and entire' when Northern Ireland knows it's being left behind in the EU.
Dr North, he of the EU Referendum blog, dismisses the very idea that the EU will impose any serious conditions to that bare-bones trade deal:
"And whatever the reservations of the pundits such an agreement is not likely to be tied to any serious conditions by the EU as its Members States, with a favourable balance of trade to the UK, would be the main beneficiaries".
The 'pundit' hyperlink is from North's original and is none other than Mr Cleppe and his story based on Rahman's apparently well-sourced thread.
Dr North makes the assumption that member states will grant us a quick bare-bones trade deal without any quid pro quo even on fishing rights which he doesn't think is 'likely to be much of an obstacle'. This is, in my opinion, wishful thinking writ large.
The EU27 do have a favourable balance of trade, which is why they will be anxious to keep it that way so the prospect of granting a condition-free trade deal allowing us to deregulate and undercut them is not going to happen.
The Commission may be all sorts of things but stupid they are not.
Once again the EU27 will calculate that the potential damage on our side is proportionately far greater than for them and they will extract as much as they can while they enjoy a strong position. Once a deal is agreed - even a basic framework of tariff and quota free trade in goods - they will lose much of the leverage because we will have gained access of a sort to the Single Market and will therefore be safe from the cliff edge.
No, all of the compromising will be done by the British government and most of that will be done next year. Even if a deal is not agreed and we request an extension, the compromises we will have to make in future will by then be painfully clear.
On the subject of trade deals you might want to read this article in Prospect Magazine which describes the steep learning curve that ministers face. The writer is Guy de Jonquières, a senior fellow at at the European Centre for International Political Economy and previously World Trade Editor at the Financial Times:
"The first lesson is that all negotiations require compromises and trade-offs. That, it seems, is news to cabinet members. One senior Tory former minister says most do not yet grasp that the more Britain seeks to diverge from European Union laws and regulations after Brexit, the less access the EU will offer to its market.
"That ought to be obvious, since the UK for many years led the drive to create those regulations. If it wants now to ditch them—one of the main reasons advanced for Brexit—it faces years of arduous effort to devise mechanisms, such as mutual recognition and conformity agreements, that satisfy the EU that British products and services meet its standards. Otherwise, UK exports would be at a severe disadvantage on European markets."
