No deal is not the worst deal...
The UK media and the Brexiteers are already repeating the same old mantras which they used to spout about a No Deal Brexit, only this time about a trade war with the EU over the Northern Ireland Protocol.
The, “don’t threaten us” we have you over a barrel lot are back. As are the, “a WTO style no deal is fine” and the “German car makers will never let it happen” brigade. Oh and I nearly forgot the “we have a trade deficit with the EU so they have more to lose than us” fools are raising their heads again.
Besides the fact that all of these arguments are ridiculous, they didn’t work last time when the British government decided it really needed a deal.
The problem for the Prime Minister is that these people are egging him on to start a fight that even common sense, let alone political and economic analysis, shows he has no hope of winning.
So does he pander to them and further damage the economy in the hope that he can blame the EU and create a permanent jingoistic majority? Or does he do the right thing and backdown now, when he can still save face?
It might help if he remembers that bad though WTO terms are they are better than a trade war, which is what the UK will have if it tears up the NIP.
Introducing something worse than a no deal when you already had a deal, really takes some doing. But I think this government might just manage it.
Economics, trade and Brexit, not necessarily in that order but the dog always comes first.