Thread by @GeorgePeretzQC

There is no obvious rational answer to that question, put like that. But there may be some less obvious (indeed concealed) rational ones.

https://twitter.com/georgeperetzqc/status/1337316990575210496

The first concealed rational answer is that, in a negotiation, you may want to try to force your counterparty to offer better terms by saying that you will walk if you don’t get them.

And you may say that even if, faced with the choice between currently offered terms and walking away, you’d be mad to walk away.

Being mad - or appearing to be so - is sometimes a good negotiating strategy.

If that’s right, the current govt can’t of course admit its rational reason - it has to pretend to be mad in the hope of getting something better. That’s a cheerful thought.

But here is a less cheerful thought. There is an alternative hidden reason why the current government dislikes the proposed EU clause, and would rationally prefer the certainty of huge damage now to the possibility of less damage later.

The problem for the current government is that, in an agreement that allows the EU, at least in some circumstances, to withdraw some benefits of an agreement if divergence occurs, the pressure on the UK government not to diverge will be huge.

Moreover, the current government knows that it is at the extreme end of the Brexit spectrum, based on an inherently fractious coalition, and that any future government is likely to want a closer relationship with the EU.

It cannot be confident that it would resist pressure not to diverge: and it can have no faith in its successors to resist that pressure.

However, now, it has the chance (because it has got a majority prepared to contemplate no deal and because that is just what will happen if it does nothing) to set the country on a path where that temptation to stay close to the EU is taken away.

Note: the prattling about sovereignty is designed to obfuscate what is going on. Both choices - accepting a deal with a ratchet and turning it down - are exercises of sovereignty. And a ratchet does not infringe sovereignty - it just changes what the sovereign is likely to do.

If you move to New York for a while, and then get a good job, you remain entirely free (sovereign) to leave NY: it’s just that your wish to keep the good job (keeping all the FTA’s benefits and all zero tariffs) is likely to mean that you don’t leave (don’t diverge).

The current government wants to diverge (it isn’t quite clear about what, and its coalition will start splitting when it does become clear - but that is what it wants).

So it doesn’t want an agreement that pulls it (and its successors) into non-divergence. Even if the cost of turning that agreement down is on any view enormous and certain compared to the lower and contingent cost imposed if the UK decides to diverge under the agreement.

That point of view is rational, if you think divergence is a goal in itself (I don’t, but I’m not this government).

But it’s a rationale that dare not speak its name, because it looks like (in my view it is) imposing huge and certain disruption/losses now in return for an ideological obsession with divergence from the EU for its own sake (the gains from which are at best speculative).