1/ You will either read this article and nod your head sagely at the sagacity of it all (because you have a bumper sticker saying "Let's Go WTO!"), or you will read it and be appalled. Either way, Lilico makes some extraordinary claims... https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/07/23/dont-worry-uk-eu-talks-collapsing-strike-better-deal-years/

2/ The first is the suggestion that the EU is being perverse in not being willing to do "the sort of FTA" that other countries "do all the time", yet not recognising that the EU Single Market (and the EEA) is sui generis. The EU has FTAs with a number of countries, and sectoral

3/ agreements with many more, but none is with a significant economy 20 miles away, and none grants the level of access the UK is seeking. Canada (i.e. CETA) is often mentioned, but it does not permit the level of regulatory divergence that Brexit headbangers are yearning for.

4/ Just ask Canadian farmers about that if you don't believe me (mentioning, for example, Regulation (EC) No 854/2004 and Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2015/1375). It's almost as if, despite being part of the EEA since 1993, we still haven't grasped what conformity

5/ assessment means in practice.

Then there is the claim that "the UK is already largely emotionally reconciled to" No-Deal. Really? It doesn't look like it:

6/ He claims the upheaval of #COVID19 will disguise the impact of a No-Deal Brexit, which will seem like a 'blip' in comparison. Implying that the effect of Brexit after January 2021 might be like the effects of a worldwide pandemic that shut down businesses and put people out of

7/ work as well as requiring huge state intervention to keep the economy moving isn't the most reassuring argument in its favour.

But, worry not! We may get a deal in 2023! As @LeaveHQ pointed out, that will be of little comfort to those businesses which suffer in the meantime.

8/ Then there is some interesting language in which he refers to "import barriers". Does he mean tariffs? Or barriers more generally? There are three kinds of barrier when it comes to trade: distance (which is fixed), tariffs (which are not as great a barrier as No-Dealers think)

9/ and non-tariff barriers (quotas, standards, etc.). But again, fear not — "higher barriers" (is that tariffs or TBTs?) between the UK and EU means that our exporters will switch to "Australia, Japan or Brazil", conveniently ignoring that fact that distance is itself a barrier.

10/ Finally we get that hoary old chestnut beloved by WTO terms headbangers which Lilico presents as a "key fact" (sic) viz. "the EU exports a lot more to the UK than the UK does to the EU". It's certainly true, but it does not follow that it is significant, especially for a bloc

11/ determined to defend the integrity of its single market. The EU (or rather the EEA) is a market of 460m people. It is our largest single export market (43% of the total, of which 43% are in services) and the largest single source of imports (51%). We may be a big EU market,

12/ but we are not the biggest. The EU-27 taken as a whole, the USA, China and Japan are all bigger. You may remember that the "they sell more to us..." line was supposed to ensure that the CEOs of Volkswagen, BMW and Siemens (et al.) would force Angela Merkel to give the UK the

13/ most preferential of preferential deals. Lilico muses that "perhaps the EU will buckle", and perhaps the German automotive sector will come to our rescue like a super-efficient Deus ex Machina, but the signs are not hopeful.

14/ I'm sure that Lilico is correct when he predicts that "in a few years" there will be a new trade deal. Reality will dictate that. But that will be of little comfort to those business and livelihoods that go under because of vastly increased barriers to trade long before then.