Anyone who thought the UK would be able to strike a trade deal with the EU while using Brexit to deregulate labour and environmental standards has not read the CETA deal with Canada (see HERE). For those people, M Barnier has again made it perfectly clear we will not be allowed to do it (HERE) and begin a race to the bottom as each country cuts standards to compete.
I don't know if Liam Fox is a deregulator but I suspect he is. In an interview this week he also believes a trade deal between the UK and the EU (HERE) will be "the easiest thing in human history" which I think sums up much of the Brexiteer wishful thinking. Messrs Fox, Davis and Johnson cannot see any problems mainly because they refused to look at them but they now appear to be suffering from serious but hopefully temporary blindness. It's ironic he was speaking on the same day that an EU trade commissioner Jyrki Katainen told CNBC (HERE) that the EU are in the middle of 21 trade negotiations (which we will lose access to after we leave by the way) and Britain will start at the back of the queue.
In any case, divergence is the big problem as I explained some time ago (HERE). The EU in any future deal will want to know they can be sure we will "not lower our respective standards and regulations related to food safety, product safety, consumer protection, health, environment or labour protection" to quote a few words from CETA".
For Brexiteers this will be one of the main sticking points. How are we to become independent if we are forced to stick with the great majority of existing regulations and directives and implement new ones as time goes by to avoid divergence.
Our International Trade minister also says Britain leaving the European Union without a new trade deal would not be the end of the world (HERE) but this is not a view shared by anyone who actually understands the issue. He says we already trade with the USA and China on WTO rules and this is true but he does not seem to see this is vastly inferior to being inside the EU single market and switching from one to the other overnight would be catastrophic. But to the fantastic Mr Fox it's all so easy.
I used to think all this bluster was part of their negotiating tactics. Go in hard and threaten the EU so that they give us everything we want. In the Brexiteers eyes this would allow them to return from Brussels in triumph in 2019 with the kind of deal David Cameron could only dream of. Now I am not so sure. It will all end in tears. Our tears that is, not their's.
