No deal need not be a disaster

Spare a thought for us foreigners. We’re desperately trying to understand the meaning of the Brexit arguments being thrown around in the House of Commons. We all have our own countries too, so we view those arguments through the lens of our homelands. So here are a few reflections on how we react. 

Theresa May’s deal has the UK leaving the voting structures of the EU but remaining in the Customs Union until the EU gives the UK permission to leave. Australia and New Zealand have a free trade agreement and co-ordinate their regulatory regimes through a joint council. But they certainly don’t have a customs union otherwise neither country would be able to make its own trade policy. And more than that, if they did have a Customs Union it would be unimaginable that either of those proud countries would allow the other unilaterally to make its trade policy for it.

Yet it seems to me that’s what will happen to the UK.