The vote on May’s deal was less important than you might think

Now that the Prime Minister’s withdrawal agreement has been decisively rejected by Parliament, the challenge, as Theresa May said last night, is to find an alternative way forward. But the reality is that the fall of the agreement is less important for the UK than widely assumed. It did not pin down any long-term trade arrangements. Even in the short term, the main gain to the UK was a transition period which now looks less essential than was the case when it was first mooted over a year ago. It is true that there is now a possibility of tariffs from March 30^th but these tariffs are mostly small and the EU has stronger reasons for avoiding them than the UK. The EU exports £54.6 billion of high tariff goods to the UK (animals, meat dairy products and road vehicles) compared to £21.1 billion of UK exports of these goods to the EU.