The Guardian<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n\u201cThe single market is the most level of level playing fields. So for the EU27 to accede to a demand from a large, neighbouring and economically significant third country \u2013 the UK \u2013 for preferential access to it without a binding commitment to abide by its rules is simply unthinkable. It would undermine the essence of the bloc.<\/p>\n
That is why the EU27 are not budging.<\/p>\n
All [the EU27] agree that no deal, regrettable as it would be, is better than a deal that risks giving UK companies an unfair competitive advantage in Europe\u2019s single market \u2013 now or in the future.<\/p>\n
That was the position in 2016 and it is the position now\u201d.<\/p>\n
In a nutshell: the UK will have to accept the spine of the EU\u2019s regulatory framework in order to strike this deal.<\/p>\n
So far, the UK has failed to understand that the EU is negotiating trade deals with other countries all the time, and what this process entails for the EU.<\/p>\n
To cut the UK slack in a prospective trade deal will open the EU to charges from other countries seeking an EU trade deal along the lines of \u201cwhy aren\u2019t you giving us the easy terms you offered the UK?\u201d.<\/p>\n
The UK\u2019s Brexiters interpret every step taken by the EU in its dealings with Albion as a vengeful attempt to punish the UK for daring to leave.<\/p>\n
This is a Brexiter misreading, intentional or not, and the truth is simpler and more obvious.<\/p>\n
The terms offered the UK for its departure could be used by other countries seeking trade deals with the EU as a \u201cbase-line\u201d negotiating position for themselves, which will certainly not be conducive to the EU\u2019s interests.<\/p>\n
No slack to the UK, therefore no slack to these countries.<\/p>\n
This is the likely unstated premise for the EU\u2019s position with regard to the UK in these negotiations.<\/p>\n
Despite all the last-minute shadow theatre (e.g., the UK threatening to scare-off French fishermen with Navy gunboats) surrounding these negotiations, BoJo Johnson is being confronted with an inexorable truth: either a No Deal Brexit or else a Brexit trading deal pretty much on the EU\u2019s terms (with the EU making a few cosmetic concessions in a face-saving placation of the UK).<\/p>\n
Whatever transpires, we should bet that BoJo, ever the hoaxer, will claim the result as a \u201cvictory\u201d.<\/p>\n
The EU will probably say, albeit not publicly, that the outcome gave those Englander bastards something which can\u2019t do damage to the EU\u2019s own interests.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile Ukanians also have the Covid crisis to deal with, and BoJo and his team have been catastrophically inept (and hugely corrupt with respect to Covid-related procurement) in dealing with this so far.<\/p>\n
Alas, on this front, the shameless BoJo and his circle have been claiming \u201cworld-beating victories\u201d as the Covid death toll mounts.<\/p>\n
In Ukania, as in the US, rightwing politicians feel impelled to contort reality so that everything can be presented as some kind of \u201cvictory\u201d.<\/p>\n
For these rightwing fraudsters, \u201closing\u201d is impossible to accept (at least not publicly), and so the populace pays the deadly price for this mass, self-inflicted, idiocy.<\/p>\n\n
This post was originally published on Radio Free<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Photograph Source: Ungry Young Man \u2013 CC BY 2.0 Both the UK and the EU are engaged in a game of brinkmanship, amounting to a kind of shadow\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":197,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,266,4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2465"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/197"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2465"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2465\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2466,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2465\/revisions\/2466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}