Brexit Has Already Started To Fall Apart – As Has The Us Trade Deal uk.news.yahoo.com

It is unfortunate that the word “special”, like “bad”, and “wicked”, has in popular culture come to mean close to the opposite of its original meaning. But never has a turnaround been more aptly demonstrated than at a cosy chat-style panel event to discuss “The Future of the Special Relationship between the UK and the United States” with the countries’ equally special foreign ministers, Dominic Raab and Mike Pompeo. It will come as a shock to absolutely no one that now, just 24 hours before Britain’s final departure from the European Union, the most recent metamorphosis of Brexit has already started to fall apart. As Raab and Pompeo ambled on to the stage in London, the government formally published guidelines telling people what to expect from Brexit. For years – decades, even – the conventional narrative (which is to say, lie) around the European Union was all about regulation, the “red tape” that was “strangling British business.” And here, of course, just 24 hours before we leave, came the latest advice, from the government’s official spokesperson. “We have always been very clear that we are leaving the EU’s customs union and single market and that means that businesses will have to prepare for life outside of these,” he said. “We are leaving the customs union, that means businesses will have to prepare outside of the customs union. It will inevitably mean extra processes are required on EU-UK trade.” Of course, that phrase “always very clear” it is subject to multiple interpretations. As chance would have it, another thing that is also “very clear” is how EU-UK trade after Brexit would work, as explained by Michael Gove, in his set speech while campaigning for Leave in April 2016, which unfortunately I have to quote here in full:

“There is a free trade zone stretching from Iceland to Turkey that all European nations have access to, regardless of whether they are in or out of the euro or EU. After we vote to leave we will stay in this zone. The suggestion that Bosnia, Serbia, Albania and the Ukraine would stay part of this free trade area – and Britain would be on the outside with just Belarus – is as credible as Jean-Claude Juncker joining UKIP. Agreeing to maintain this continental free trade zone is the simple course and emphatically in everyone’s interests.”