In recent months, Boris Johnson and his team have been keen to suggest there is a hard deadline when it comes to agreeing a Brexit deal. The Prime Minister argued last month that both sides ought to walk away from the talks and prepare for no deal if there was no agreement by the EU summit on October 15. With last night’s summit coming and going with no agreement made, the chances of a deal appear on the surface to have fallen significantly.
With EU leaders calling for the trade talks to continue, Johnson has this morning offered a rebuke. Speaking from Downing Street, the Prime Minister said that after little progress at the summit, it was time to prepare for no deal – or, to use No. 10’s own words, an Australian-style deal: ‘I have concluded that we should get ready for January 1 with arrangements that are more like Australia’s based on simple principles of global free trade’. With
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