The two sides are eyeball to eyeball once again. Talks are resuming in Brussels this morning in what should be the final week. The EU have I believe said that Thursday is the last date to get an agreement which can then be legally 'scrubbed', translated, circulated and approved by the European parliament and the European council. This all looks remarkably tight and relies on everything falling into place with perfect precision. Approval of the deal by the EU parliament is a body isn't in the gift of Michel Barnier or the EU27 leaders and MEPs are not under the command of anybody - except their electorate.
We still don't know if the deal will be 'mixed' or not requiring approval by over 30 state and regional legislatures although provisional application is quite normal, as it was with CETA.
Reuters report a UK government spokesman saying that "significant gaps" remain and as we know these are the key issues of fish, LPF and governance, the issues that both sides have said repeatedly would mean no agreement. Simon Coveney was the latest to say on TV yesterday that talks could easily collapse over fish:
He confirms that the EU are not going to allow the UK to agree everything else, withhold fish and then say to the EU you can't let the deal fall over fish - Coveney says without a deal on fish - an acceptable one I assume - there will be no deal. This was on Sophy Ridge on Sky TV and I assume Coveney has an idea about what's going on in the talks and what the UK's tactics are.
I have seen before references to the UK playing it's biggest card - fish - at the last minute but I didn't realise this is what they intend to do, or at least this is what the EU think they intend to do.
If true, this could be a big moment for both sides with trade worth around £1 trillion at risk over fish which is a tiny, tiny fraction but iconic and vital for many coastal communities. Would Boris Johnson throw the whole nation (including fishermen) under a bus for the sake of some fishermen? I don't think he would. It would only make sense if you were in a strong position and we aren't.
While the sticking points are wearily familiar, the relative strengths of the two sides are unchanged too. The EU is still be biggest single market and 20 miles away across The Channel. It isn't a coincidence that The Treasury under Sunak hasn't published the economic impact of a no deal Brexit but are happy to do so for the UK-Japan trade deal. If rolling over a free trade deal with a country thousands of miles away is worth something, however small, leaving a trade deal with our closest neighbour and the world's only regulatory superpower is bound to be bad.
The reason it's not published, although I'm sure it will have been done, is because it would help the EU and give support to the people in this country who want to remain. And a future government will almost certainly do the work and history will point the finger at Johnson for the economic disaster. Blair's legacy was Iraq, a distant country we only see on the news, but Johnson's legacy if we leave without a deal will be on every street in the land and I'm sure he knows it.
So, Johnson, despite the assurances he gave to Lord Frost, will not want to leave without a deal and will eventually make the necessary concessions. But all the lies he told in 2016 will come back to haunt him. He is a man with no real convictions, equally happy arguing for leaving the EU as remaining in it. This is his MO, he picks a side and "sells" the idea and in the past this has served him well. But he picked the wrong side in 2016, probably in the mistaken belief that it didn't matter very much either way.
He is about to find out just how disastrously wrong he was. Even a deal will be highly disruptive but no deal would be disastrous - and we would soon be crawling back in a far weaker state without being able to threaten to leave without a deal.
