Parliament needs to wake up. A "Canada style" FTA is nothing like Single Market participation, it does not replace it, it's a huge downgrade of our trading relationship & automatically means trade barriers between UK & EU. Legal fact/reality
This is not the EU punishing us. We could well end up with the very best and extensive FTA the EU has ever negotiated, but it will only be a bit better than the second best. FTA's are limited, it's not the same as creating a "free trade area"
or an "internal market". The EU cannot give the UK too many extra privileges like, say, major services concessions, because clauses in their existing agreements means the EU would have to grant the same to other partners
I'm only repeating what has been said over and over, by me, and by people of far greater expertise. It's clear now that this is never going to penetrate the dogma of the radicalised Leavers, but those who know the reality need to exert themselves
We need deeper economic integration than an FTA offers, we are unraveling our most important trade relationship due to dubious and hastily set red lines and we're stubbornly remaining on this track because some politicians are are frozen in fear about consequences of change
There may well be some kind of electoral risk for the Tories in softening their stance, in the short term, but the potential economic impact of current "strategy" will lose them Conservative Remain voters, and younger generations for long while to come...
... and lets be honest, the electorate are hardly fair or logical, so if Leave voters feel you've made them poorer they are just as likely to punish you for a botched job.
It's true that the EU can be rigid, ideological and intransigent... but the UK keeps calling for flexibility while refusing to be flexible. Going into negotiations by ruling our all but one viable option (FTA) while saying we want more, but without compromising on hasty red lines
It's a strange coalition. Corbynites on one side who want to ditch the "neoliberal" Single Market because it constrains their socialist vision & Tory Leavers on the other who think we can wind the clock back to before the Single European Act 1991 & be a distinct regulatory entity
But we've already went through the trauma of transforming our regulatory regime & achieving compliance long ago, attempting to reverse it is akin to nostalgia about the coal mines and nationalised industry
Unroll @threadreaderapp
