The fantasist David Davis was on TV yesterday morning (HERE) telling us he planned to have a bespoke trade deal with the EU ready for approval by the 27 leaders in eight months. He said they would "start" with the best of the Canada deal, the best of the Japanese deal and the best off the Korean deal, then add services and have this ratified ready for signing minutes after we leave on March 29th 2019.
We shouldn't forget that he told us they would have free trade agreements with other countries done by last September - in fact we have none and none even close, so his forecasting is not that good.
Bear this in mind when I say that yesterday, an EU diplomat told the Politico website (HERE) that all we had done so far was the easy bit. This is simply getting to the point where transition and trade talks can actually start. Note this has taken eight or nine months! The diplomat said:
“The financial settlement has been portrayed by the British as a kind of transaction, the payment, the price of an entry ticket into what they call trade talks in phase 2. You know perfectly well that there will be no trade talks proper until after the U.K. leaves the European Union. It would be impossible to have them.”
All that can be agreed is a framework for future talks that will continue after we have left and during the transition period. There is zero chance of what Davis claims will happen actually happening.
He wants a bespoke agreement, not a cut and paste are job.
He wants to cherry pick the best parts of three recent FTAs
He wants to add services
He wants to have specific arrangements for aviation, nuclear power and so on
Amazingly, he told us "it's not that complicated" because our regulations are already aligned. But if you look at the CETA deal there is very little about standards in the 1598 pages except to say the two parties will cooperate on harmonisation. The fact we are harmonised now won't reduce the amount of negotiating by very much. We are looking at years and years of work - and always facing a cliff edge.
