Did people here see Ivan Rogers’ evidence the other day to the Brexit Committee - he is absolutely essential reading.
Of course he’s pro EU, but everything he says is gold. Do read this FT piece:
Nobody has argued otherwise. The point is that our trade with the EU as it stands is of a massively more comprehensive nature, unique only to members of the EU and EEA. We’ll get trade deals with the EU, but even the most generous will not be as good as the ones we have as members. We’ll be losing great influence over its legislation while being made to conform to EU laws (as Canada will have to do) and will face non-tariff barriers to our trade.
There’s no such thing as a completely free-trade policy, anyway. America is arguably the most protectionist country in the West, and Trump’s now bleating ‘America first!’ signalling that we will not get anything generous from anybody.
Plenty have suggested simple arrangements are achievable, mostly uninformed journalists.
I ‘simply’ posit that Ivan Rogers is a per-eminent voice people reading this thread might lie to consider.
Mr. Blair does an eloquent job of explaining that, although they may have joined forces to vote Leave, the economic agenda of “populists” is totally antithetical to the economic agenda of free-marketeers. The former group was duped by the latter.
It is uncanny how closely this same irrational alliance also accounts for the ascendancy of the GOP in the U.S.
Another uncanny similarity, since some say hatred for Hillary led to the tragic misguided choices on 8 November here.
Rogers is definitely the guy to listen to on negotiations with the EU. I quoted him up thread. He says in the piece you linked to that there are EU deals with other countries that are more than just WTO. He also says they take time to hammer out - naturally enough - and they’re piece-meal on lots of separate areas. He quotes four years for the deal on financial services equivalents.
Four years per deal per sector adds up to a lot of person-years in negotiating time. Which do we do first - agriculture, pharmaceuticals, aeronautics, financial services, automobiles? Which gets our best negotiatiors and which gets the hastily retrained civil servants?
In any case, it seems likely that, 3 years in, none of these agreements will be in place. So what will we be doing, and how many businesses who can’t cope with WTO level tariffs and NTBs will be able to hang on til a deal is thrashed out?
Yep, that’s the essence of the problem with Mr Blair.
Once bitten, etc.
We’ve already had suggestions that a fisheries deal be parked long-term as it will be an unending negotiating slog. Anecdotal, but I have a friend who worked for the Australian Foreign Affairs Department who used to front Australia’s fishing negotiations with its neighbours, and even for a country which has open waters on most of its sides, he says fishing negotiations are a constant, unending slog even when 75% of the detail is carried over every few years.
It’s going to be hilarious when the fishing community discovers they’ve been lied to and their dreams of complete control over UK fishing zones are impossible to achieve.