Well, we finally got our draft legal text showing our ideas for the future trade relationship and I think it's fair to say nobody thinks we're asking for a "standard" free trade deal. All the trade experts are scathing about it. We are obviously still asking, in many areas, to keep the same level of access to the single market that we had as a member - but without any of the legal or financial obligations. No wonder Barnier is baffled.
And stunningly, we are apparently asking for the Withdrawal Agreement that Johnson signed in January to be changed on the question of geographical indicators (GIs) like champagne and Parma Ham as covered by Article 54. The ink has barely dried on an agreement we now want to alter as we try to negotiate a new and much more complicated one. It does not give the other side confidence that we are a reliable partner.
To cap it all, David Frost has sent a letter (HERE) bellyaching about the other side.
He whinges that the EU are not offering the deal that we want. Some of the stuff in it is a national embarrassment and shows how much the government has deluded itself over the last three years.
Examples:
Overall, we find it hard to see what makes the UK, uniquely among your trading partners, so unworthy of being offered the kind of well-precedented arrangements commonplace in modern FTAs.
Translation: We are exceptional and deserve to have our cake and eat it too.
Overall, at this moment in negotiations, what is on offer is not a fair free trade relationship between close economic partners, but a relatively low-quality trade agreement coming with unprecedented EU oversight of our laws and institutions.
Translation: We are exceptional and deserve to have our cake and eat it too.
The EU has also not proposed anything on services which reflects the specific nature of our relationship: indeed your team has told us that the EU's market access offer on services might be less than that tabled with Australia and New Zealand.
Translation: We overlooked the fact that services is much the largest part of our economy and although we haven't asked before for services to be included, you haven't offered us anything anyway.
Our old friend Peter Foster summed it all up very well as usual in a Twitter thread saying Frost's letter landed in Brussels like a lead balloon:
Er...suffice to say @DavidGHFrostletter to @MichelBarnierlanded like a lead balloon in Brussels.Mr Frost finds it "perplexing" that the EU will not give the UK a bunch of special treatment that will reduce costs of #brexit 1/https://t.co/egLFeuQQvX
— Peter Foster (@pmdfoster) May 19, 2020
He makes clear, as do all the trade experts I read on Twitter last night, that what Britain is asking for is far more that a Canada style deal and includes unprecedented stuff on Rules of Origin, Financial services, SPS checks, road transport, and a whole host of areas.
Foster concludes:
"What's amazing is how history of these negotiations repeats itself - red lines, long stand-offs etc - and then an 'autumn crunch' in which the UK acquaints itself with the costs of conflating the trade agenda with the sovereignty agenda. Round and round we go"
And finally:
FWIW I think there can be a deal, there should be a deal, suspect there probably will be a deal (though that is becoming an increasingly minority position) but I still don't believe that the EU side can be bluffed and bullied into it. The asymmetries are too big. We'll see
It is a sign just how much the government wants a deal. We now know for sure who needs who the most. The strongest side in a negotiation does not whinge.
