Brexiteers beware – a bad deal is still a real risk

The UK’s negotiating efforts with the EU this year have been dramatically better than under the May administration. But a bad deal is still a real risk as a result of political and time pressures. 

Some recent reports suggest the UK may be flirting with dangerous compromises in key areas. The temptation to give ground just to get a deal over the line must be avoided. The government needs to remember that its key aim – re-establishing the UK as a genuinely independent state – can be met by simply leaving the transition period without a deal. Moreover, the government should bear in mind how limited the benefits of a thin trade deal with the EU are, especially one hedged around with various EU-friendly restrictions on UK action.

At the start of the year, chief UK negotiator David Frost laid out clearly that the government’s key aim was to ‘recover our political and economic independence in full’.