A good summary of where we are on Customs Union from the FT... but to build on this a little... 1/ ft.com/content/5eed18… via @financialtimes
One of the 'pillars' of successful trade policy is consensus (extract from last week's report below)... and patently the UK Government has failed to build this domestically... 2/ 
If the other party can see you don't have this domestic support there's little incentive for them to go beyond standard positions, which is what we see from the EU... 3/
The Northern Ireland border question then turns this into complete stalemate, given the UK solutions so far offered are obviously unrealistic 4/
The UK Government's options would appear to be build consensus over Customs Union or hard border or look again at EEA or even staying in the EU, all of which are difficult 5/
So the current unstable position seems to be ignore all of this and hope to get to March 2019, leave the EU, then start again with the same problems 6/
Which might just work, given the only EU alternative, no deal, breaks their own red line as it would create a hard Irish border 7/
A veteran trade negotiator told me in July 2016, watch the transition deal, that could well become the permanent future UK-EU relationship. There is some kind of consensus for that 8/ ends
