Tory Brexiteers are peddling another fantasy with their Canada deal idea

The Conservative Party is starting to look like Annie Wilkes, the psychotic nurse from the film Misery, standing over Britain with a sledgehammer. In the film she says “trust me it's for the best" to writer Paul Sheldon before smashing it into his legs. In this case, it's our legs that will get broken.

With Theresa May’s Chequers Brexit plan on death row, the idea of something like the Canada style trade deal the EU struck, known as Ceta, with some bells and whistles is back to the fore and gaining traction. It’s being called Ceta +++. Nobody knows what’s supposed to be in the +++ because the UK hasn’t officially adopted this position. We just have lots of right wing think tanks floating ideas.

Lining up with them, however, are the crazy true believer Brexiteers, and the born again Brexiteers in Cabinet who are basically much the same thing. Their spin doctors have been telling friendly newspapers they are in the majority. You can take that with a pinch of salt, but perhaps it's worth another look at what it might mean all the same.

The idea would, it is held, give us a ‘clean Brexit’, for which read a very hard Brexit. Some Leavers voted for this. Lots did not, but none of this has ever been about what the Leavers, or anyone else want. It’s about what the Conservative Party, and the extremists that now dominate it, want and can agree.

Let’s make one thing clear: A Ceta style arrangement would still be better than chaotically crashing out of the EU with nothing sorted out.

It would facilitate the transition period that has been agreed. The UK would pay its divorce bill, so the projects it has signed up to could proceed. That’s important because the UK needs to be seen as a country that complies with its international obligations if it wants to secure deals with third countries.

Ceta is a goods based package. There isn’t much for the services, upon which the UK economy is heavily reliant in it, but then there isn’t much for services under Chequers either.

Perhaps you could fix something in the +++, but I wouldn’t bank on it (and most of the banks aren’t which is why they’re shipping out).

It’s actually fairly easy to deal with the issue of lowering import tariffs, but beyond that it starts to get complicated in terms of, say, regulations - don’t kid yourself that such a deal wouldn’t inevitably involve some alignment - and how to resolve disputes.

The UK seems happy to cede control to secretive, ‘independent’ courts when it comes to a trade deal dictated by the US, sorry, agreed with the US, but less so with the EU because we’d being giving up sovereignty to the bally Euro lot!

Nonetheless, there is a role for independent courts in Ceta so there would have to be something like them in Ceta +++. Like it or not, trade agreements inevitably involve giving some sovereignty up.

Did you know that are quotas knocking around in Ceta, particularly as regards agriculture? That’s something else that isn’t widely discussed. Perhaps they’ll be dealt with through the +++. Who knows or dares to dream.

The Irish border? Errm, technology. And may be we’ll agree some checks away from it and, erm… Ceta +++ doesn’t help that issue any more than Chequers.

Oh and customs. Yes let’s talk about customs. While Ceta isn't prefect, and critics say it will increase inequality and cost jobs, it does fine for the EU and Canada because they don’t have the complex interlinked supply chains facilitating just in time delivery that industries like UK motor rely upon.

As the CBI’s Carolyn Fairbairn has pointed out, it’s a nice idea for countries separated by a huge ocean. Something rather different is required for a country separated from its biggest trading partner by a few miles of sea.

Under Ceta +++ we’re still be looking at the potential of an almighty customs snafu, a massive lorry park in Kent and a lot of economic damage. It will cost every one of us hundreds of pounds on top of what we’ve already lost through the higher prices, reduced investment, and lower growth ushered in by a deeply dysfunctional Brexit process.

The Institute of Economic Affairs, one of those right wing think tanks I mentioned, talked wistfully this morning of resetting “the EU-UK negotiation – in a wider global context - to advocate an advanced free trade agreement, with maximum regulatory recognition”.

Please.

Ceta took ten years to agree, and the ratification process was positively agonising, even with both sides showing willing and enjoying friendly co-operative relations (which the UK doesn't have with Europe thanks to the conduct of its politicians). Even if you work on the basis of modelling Ceta +++ on Ceta, and concede that you’ll be able to sort the detail during a two year transition, you’re still proposing a wildly optimistic timetable.

The truth of it is that this is all yet more fantasy peddled by people who don’t have a realistic plan, and are basically looking for excuses and someone to blame (ie the EU) for the mess they've created.

And so it's on to chaos and Annie’s sledgehammer. It's falling fast.