Breaking: UK government source says reason for Brexit talks impasse is EU wants a "backstop to the backstop" - which would keep just Northern Ireland in customs union and single market. That would introduce serious new border between NI and GB & @theresa_may had to reject
This may seem surreal, but the EU is not persuaded that the UK's backstop plan - which puts UK 3/4 inside customs union, unable to set tariffs but able to negotiate trade deals - will actually work. So wants Northern-Ireland-only backstop to the backstop. @DominicRaab was...
...despatched to Brussels yesterday to reject this. That said, in other respects, UK source says there has been good progress on Withdrawal Agreement and a political declaration on the future relationship between UK and EU. Even so, and as I have been saying for days, there is...
...still a gulf between UK and EU on how to provide confidence that the backstop itself (not the backstop to the backstop) is temporary. For what it's worth, the UK thinks the EU has an incentive to show that backstop would be temporary, because the fact that UK would be...
...only 3/4 inside customs union, ie able to negotiate trade deals (though not trade deals where UK could negotiate tariffs, only non-tariff barriers - and also not those relating to goods) makes the backstop an uncomfortable precedent for the EU. Most Brexiters will see...
...May as disingenuous in arguing EU would not want to keep us in backstop however. So all still very messy. Even so, UK government thinks it is possible there will be significant progress towards deal at this week's EU council. And May is nowhere near writing off Brexit talks...
...and is a long way from planning for no-deal Brexit as the most likely outcome.
What I think this impasse shows, perhaps more than anything else, is how little trust there is between the UK and EU in these talks - first, because the EU thinks there needs to be a "backstop to the backstop", showing it has little confidence in our ability to...
...implement the actual backstop, and second because the UK fears that the EU isn't negotiating a backstop in good faith, and is simply trying to leapfrog us to the "backstop to the backstop". When I said this was "surreal" I think I was understating the madness.
