Category: The EU

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Ursula von der Leyen

Boris Johnson and the unelected President of the EU Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, have agreed to extend Brexit negotiations to the end of the month in the hope of coming to an agreement.

Why are we still wasting valuable time and resources on flogging this dead pferd?

Nothing the EU offers us will be to our benefit. They entered into negotiations in bad faith with the express intention of making sure any deal would be seen as a punishment to send a message to any other member states considering independence. Continuing to divert valuable trade negotiators away from negotiations with countries that want to do deals the right way is nonsensical.

Even if a deal was done by the end of this month nobody has got time to put it into action. Neither the civil service nor businesses here or abroad have time to make changes to IT systems and processes to make any of it work. The only deal now that can work is no EU deal and reverting to WTO terms.

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Not a level playing field

What passes for negotiations between the UK and the EU on what the relationship between the two will look like from next year are floundering thanks to the intransigence and unreasonableness of the EU.

The EU is demanding unprecedented access to our fishing waters, the right to impose laws on us and for the EU courts to continue to have jurisdiction in the UK. They call this a “level playing field”.

There is a fundamental misunderstanding about what these negotiations are about. It’s not the UK negotiating from a position of weakness, asking for the price of doing a deal with the EU because we’re desperate. It’s the world’s 5th largest economy offering the EU the opportunity to continue doing business with its largest trading partner with fewer barriers and tariffs.

A level playing field means fair and equitable, not unbalanced and punitive terms to try and force us into a perpetually weakened position. The EU has acted in bad faith throughout this entire process, nothing they offer us will be to our favour. We need to stop wasting time on this sham negotiation, put the current offer back on the table a week before new year and walk away if the EU don’t accept it.