The government is not fully ruling out further legislation for stronger domestic commitments later. But the approach after the transition is to scrap state aid and start again. For a government that cares about the UK IM this is negative even ignoring for a moment an EU deal 1/ https://twitter.com/AntonSpisak/status/1303697090711891969

If we end up with a domestic regime that actually has teeth and therefore can do the job of regulating wasteful subsidies, starting from scratch will mostly be a waste of energy. We would be much better off performing surgery on the parts of state aid that are deficient 2/

Most of the concepts in state aid we have helped develop and are still useful. What we'll get instead with a wholesale new approach is a wave of litigation to settle questions that have already been answered by EU case law and probably won't reach a different outcome. 3/

The other option is the government does not legislate further and we end up with an advisory regime with no real powers. That increases the risk of intra-UK subsidy races and wasteful subsidies to no real benefit. Most of what we want to subsidise could be done now anyway 4/

Then returning to the context of an EU deal - this is not happening in a vacuum after all - it is likely to make a resolution harder. 5/

Perhaps it is a negotiating tactic to say if you don't sign a deal we'll have no constraints beyond the WTO. But the key to a solution is reciprocal commitments that respect UK autonomy and give the EU some confidence. I don't see how the threat helps much 6/

If we're not prepared to offer more than the WTO (more or less what Canada has) we will forsake the benefits of a reciprocal deal - which should be about being able to get redress for harmful EU subsidies as much as it is about UK ones. 7/

We just don't get much advantage from the counterfactual of opting for the WTO only approach.

Much more to come very soon from @instituteforgov that makes this case in more detail. I continue to think that there will be a deal despite everything that has happened today ends/