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That's the NHS (Hancock), US food (Gove), and US voluntary standards (BEIS) that apparently won't be on the table. Which might well be the US top 3. Like Brexit talks, tricky to reach agreement when you keep rejecting the other sides major asks.
Other countries aren't just going to drop their red lines for the UK because in international negotiations precedent really matters. Everyone else will start asking for same. Talking of which, about time we developed our own negotiating objectives...
If we had developed clear trade negotiating objectives (with defensives) by now there would be less chance we'd get into this reactive / protectionist spiral. I think Number 10 secrecy obsession the main problem, but another challenge for next PM
And this anonymous official may be right about the technicalities but they are rather different from the politics, and the politics of UK trade are currently defensiveness and protectionism
