Why a Brexit trade deal will be so difficult for Boris Johnson to strike

The problem, writes Sean O'Grady, all comes down to trust

The talks will probably go right to the wire – the end of December

Although it’s probably not as lively a topic of popular conversation as the merits of VAR or events at the Brits, the question about whether the UK can have a “Canada-style” trade agreement with the EU is probably the more portentous.

It seems that the UK cannot have such a deal, as it would now like, because the EU won’t agree to it. This is the case even though the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, once proposed precisely that option to the EU’s Council of Ministers at a key meeting back in 2017.

In a leaked PowerPoint slide now circulating on Twitter, there is a “staircase” of different options, from full membership through various degrees of integration (Norway, Switzerland, Ukraine, Turkey), down to the more modest free trade agreements the EU has concluded with South Korea and Canada. These allow for great freedom for the “third country” to pursue its own trade policy and general economic arrangements. The Johnson government likes the sound of this because it would preserve the UK’s tariff- and quota-free access to the EU’s huge markets, while allowing the UK government freedom to frame internal policies that would boost British competitiveness, both with the EU and the wider world.