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You're very badly misinformed. How badly the UK did in the negotiations can be seen in the concessions won by the EU with the NI protocol. The actual trade dea

You're very badly misinformed. How badly the UK did in the negotiations can be seen in the concessions won by the EU with the NI protocol. The actual trade deal covers goods where the UK has a large trade deficit and does not cover services at all. Also the EU is starting to impose tariffs and checks on goods coming out of the UK, while the UK won't do the same for some time as their border control systems aren't ready and they're missing some 40 000 customs agents. So even as exporters are feeling the pain, the actual mangling of supply chains for british importers is still to come. While the best case scenario for the EU would've been the UK staying in the customs union, with that option closed this is as good as it gets. There are no winners in Brexit, only relative losers.

Arnt 5y ago
What NI concessions are those? AFAICT Britain conceded nothing that it wasn't already required to do by the Good Friday agreement. BTW, I don't agree about those checks. Skipping those would not be doable for the EU. Dozens of countries have MFN treaties with the EU. If the EU were to offer Britain anything that those countries aren't offered (such as not checking imports/exports) then all of those trade treaties would need to be renegotiated, because those countries would no longer be most favoured. IIRC some sixty countries' parliaments would have to vote on the resulting treaty changes. That's too much to be doable.
vesinisa 5y ago
The Northern Ireland situation was simply resolved the only way it could be. If there was some better outcome for the UK that would have not spoiled the entire integrity of the EU, I am sure it would have been allowed. But no matter how good Johnson's team was in extracting concessions from the EU, even they can not move mountains nor islands, or otherwise change hard geographical realities.

Arnt 5y ago

What NI concessions are those? AFAICT Britain conceded nothing that it wasn't already required to do by the Good Friday agreement. BTW, I don't agree about those checks. Skipping those would not be doable for the EU. Dozens of countries have MFN treaties with the EU. If the EU were to offer Britain anything that those countries aren't offered (such as not checking imports/exports) then all of those trade treaties would need to be renegotiated, because those countries would no longer be most favoured. IIRC some sixty countries' parliaments would have to vote on the resulting treaty changes. That's too much to be doable.

vesinisa 5y ago

The Northern Ireland situation was simply resolved the only way it could be. If there was some better outcome for the UK that would have not spoiled the entire integrity of the EU, I am sure it would have been allowed. But no matter how good Johnson's team was in extracting concessions from the EU, even they can not move mountains nor islands, or otherwise change hard geographical realities.