Brussels is well acquainted with being cast as the baddy by grandstanding prime ministers and ministers. Ruling out one Brussels-led policy in bellicose terms lets governments accept quietly something else that may only be slightly less toxic to the voters and domestic political alliances that give them power. [...]
If there are any doubts in Brussels that May has now accepted a Canada-style free trade deal as the likely landing zone, albeit with some bells and whistles to make it look like a compromise, Jeremy Hunt, the foreign secretary, was able to assuage them on the BBC’s Today show on Saturday. Asked twice to rule out such a deal, with the regulatory barriers on imports this involves, he did not do so.
But there’s a bigger, and intractable, row to come. May says she has ruled out a border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK for constitutional reasons. She may also have done this because the UK’s manufacturing sector is reliant on an absence of customs checks between Britain, Ireland and the continent. Yet the UK’s continued membership in a customs union has also been ruled out. The Brexiters see many of the Leave benefits as coming from the ability of global Britain to set its own tariff schedule on imports. Something has to give. Brussels is preparing for things to get much darker.
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