Michel Barnier has once again hit the nail on the head. In a speech in Sofia he has apparently said we have been reduced to "pleading" to be allowed to sell financial and other services into the EU (HERE). He also said we are more dependent on trade with the EU than they are with us.
In the speech Barnier rejected Theresa May’s call for continued trade in financial services between Britain and the EU “based on the UK and EU maintaining the same regulatory outcomes over time”.
He said: “I can perfectly see the UK's logic and interest in pleading for a system of ‘mutual recognition’ and ‘reciprocal regulatory equivalence’,” Mr Barnier said at a finance conference in the Bulgarian capital. “This is, indeed, what the single market achieves!”
It is as I have noted before, we want to be outside the EU but also inside it at the same time. To have all the benefits of access but none of the cost or obligations. We want to be like Schrodinger's cat, in two different states at the same time. Barnier also said::
‘Everything must change so that everything can stay the same’, to paraphrase Lampedusa. But this will not work. The UK has decided to withdraw from the Union. It wants to be sovereign and be able to set its own rulebook, to have its own supervision and enforcement system.
“In doing so, the UK will move away from EU rules. It will not accept common EU supervision and enforcement tools. These are precisely the essential building blocks of our post-crisis financial regulation. They ensure that the internal market can exist and function correctly.
