We’re In Charge…We Are!

This blog has argued that Boris Johnson is likely to meet the 31 January 2021 deadline for concluding a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the EU by embodying in an FTA all or most of the terms of the Transitional Arrangements (TAs) that will come into force in 25 days with a mechanism to amend its terms in the future.

Hard Brexiteers could be expected to complain that such an FTA was a BINO, a Brexit in name only. In response, we might expect Johnson to point out that the U.K. will have acted as a sovereign state in agreeing the FTA with the EU and was free to repudiate or renegotiate its terms as as sovereign state. Hence, entering such an FTA, while in effect prolonging the TAs indefinitely, could be paraded as a first and major exercise of the UK’s new-found independence and a clear example of having ‘taken back control’.

More having and eating Boris’s cake.