Picture the scene. UK a committed member of EU sees France vote to leave. France further announces it will also leave the Customs Union & The Single Market. UK Gov immediately *warns* its population & businesses what this means. It helps with the mammoth costs of being prepared

It invests heavily in ports upgrades, new needed infrastructure; training of an extra 5000 customs officers and 50,000 customs agents plus thousands of extra vets. It also recruits the many extra staff now needed in its otherwise overwhelmed tax & revenue government department .

New IT is designed costed and built with vital input from the industry that will actually use it. In the meantime France continues to insult UK and other members and tries to hide the costs of leaving from its population instead pretending it will offer "opportunities".

It refuses an extension in the middle of the Covid crisis & instead decides it will unilaterally relax customs & standards controls for first 6 months through Calais/Coquelles much to the glee of smugglers in UK & in the rest of the world now looking to tranship through UK ports

UK has all its new IT tested ready for over a year and those extra trained staff ready to go. It has been helping industry continue paying those '50,000' (etc) salaries because of course they're not needed commercially until day one out of the transition period agreed ..

Would UK be happy at this stage to help obstructive, chest beating, but now desperate France further with opening its market to "relaxed" customs & standards controls where there are legal objections from other treaty members (internal market & 3rd country) ..& all WTO members ?