In answer to a suggestion from Baroness Ludford, he said this:
"My Lords, the downside to a Swiss-style SPS or veterinary agreement is that it would require our food and drink sector to accept not laws that were made in this country but the laws of the European Union. As far as this Government are concerned, that is quite a considerable downside to such an agreement. It is why we cannot accept one that is based on dynamic alignment."
So, I think that expecting any substantial change is unrealistic. There is no pressure on the EU, they achieved more or less every single one of the key points in their negotiating mandate and have a tariff free deal on goods which is hugely to their advantage. Supply chains are being reconfigured and being the larger market by far, customers in the EU will find it easier to source goods or parts from elsewhere in the block. British business and financial service are engaged in a wholesale shifting of distribution activities into the single market to minimise red tape, all of which benefits the EU.
It's hard to say that for Britain or British manufacturers.
Some people see the salvation for a lot of businesses in the joint Partnership Council which will soon be set up to oversee the trade deal. There is an idea that they will somehow revise the arrangements to make things easier, but the trade expert David Henig says these sorts of bodies are in most EU trade deals and only meet once a year or so to finesse some details. What they do not and cannot do is renegotiate sections of the deal. The TCA is what it is.
And in truth there is little pressure on the government. They are still ahead in the polls, may win the Hartlepool by-election and do well enough in the local government elections, despite the fog of sleaze that has descended on Johnson and his ministers.
People are unlikely to change their opinion until they or their family are impacted personally by something and at the moment, they don't seem to blame Johnson for anything.
But we can already see fishing communities and citizens and businesses in Northern Ireland feeling the effects of the trade deal. Some if not all of the sleaze allegations will be proven and we don't know what will happen to the polls then. For the moment though the government looks safe enough.
But - and there is a big BUT here - the Conservative party, or shall I say the cabal that has captured it, seems to think it will be in power indefinitely. They won't. All administrations fall out of favour in time and while now it seems that Brexit will never be reversed, I have no doubt that it will - eventually.
The right wing fringe only represent a strand of conservative thinking and they are not Thatcherite at all. They did somehow persuade a narrow majority to vote for Brexit at a point in time in mid 2016, selling it like dodgy car salesmen with smooth but entirely false assurances that all would be well, but beyond that nobody has yet shown any Brexit benefits.
To see Brexit in some sort of historical context, you only have to look at how much the position of the party changed from one prime minister to the next in the same party. Mrs May wanted a deep and special partnership mimicking as far as possible the access to the single market that we had, the 'exact same benefits' as David Davis once told MPs.
Johnson reversed all that and we have now a very thin and different trade deal similar to the one that distant Canada has. Hence, Brexit, or the ones proposed by May or negotiated by Johnson don't necessarily represent the broad sweep of mainstream Tory thinking surely? They are quite different positions and it's hard to see how all the 150,000 Tory party members suddenly changed their opinion overnight when Johnson came in.
If you can get a massive policy shift inside the same party, imagine what a new party or coalition might achieve once in government. Labour were already committed to renegotiating a "progressive trade strategy that would champion exports from the environmental goods and services sector" and their support for the TCA last year was on the basis that the alternative was a no-deal.
Keir Starmer has said that Labour would seek out greater protections for workers’ rights and the environment in continued negotiations with the EU to build a strong partnership with the EU
If Labour manage to get elected one day, as I'm sure they will, this closer partnership, with a Swiss-style SPS or veterinary agreement may not seem so unreasonable, especially after 'sovereignty' proves to be fools gold with no practical worth. By then we will have sustained a lot of economic damage and I think the country would happily accept that sticking to EU or European food standards is perfectly OK.
The next obvious step is to make the argument that if we are going to stick by EU regulations we may as well help to make them, which has always been the unresolvable conundrum at the heart of Brexit.
And after that rejoining will be the logical step.
