Leaving the EU will mean extra costs, delays, queues and paperwork, even with a last-minute face-saving agreement
Deal or no deal, the last round of Brexit negotiations begins tomorrow. In a fortnight, European Union leaders meet to decide on the outcome. The mood music, some claimed last week, had improved. Others say everything still hangs perilously in the balance. The words of David Frost, the UK negotiator, are, well, frosty: while a deal is still “very much possible”, he calls icily for the EU to “scale back” its “unrealistic ambitions” on the old battlegrounds – fishing and state aid. That’s hardly emollient.
Here’s the important point: there’s not so much practical difference between no deal and the rotten bare-bones deal left on the table. Boris Johnson would, of course proclaim an “incredible, fantastic, world-beating” victory if he achieved the latter – but don’t let him get away with it, as the brutal reality hits home on 1 January.
