This tweet has been really bugging me, and I should probably just ignore it and get a life, but here’s why. https://twitter.com/jonlis1/status/1333745198887804929

It’s inaccurate to say that the transition period was designed to provide time to implement an agreed deal. It wasn’t.

The transition period was designed to provide time for a trade deal to be negotiated once the UK was no longer a member state (a legal requirement since the EU cannot legally negotiate a trade deal with one of its members) but while...

... the UK remained part of all the EU’s regulatory, commercial and economic structures (i.e. in the customs union and the single market).

The latter provision was put in place to prevent the chaos that would come from the UK and EU immediately having to trade on WTO terms after the Article 50 period ended and until a trade deal was agreed.

This is the transition - from being a member state, to being a non-member which is part of the single market and customs union, to being a third country with a trade deal with the EU.

Now I know that Theresa May described the period we are now in as an implementation period, but it was obviously to her and everyone else that it wasn’t anything of the sort.

And this is why Part 4 of the Withdrawal Agreement is titled “Transition “, not implementation.

Now those with an eagle eye will note that Art. 126 (which is the first in part 4) states that - “There shall be a transition or implementation period”, and there is a further reference to an implementation period in the preamble, but...

...these two references to implementation were just a diplomatic concession to UK politics and the linguistic manipulation that was going on in the UK at the time.

At no other point in Part 4 or the whole Withdrawal Agreement is the phrase “implementation period” used. Instead, the phrase transition period is used 100 times.

So it is misleading to suggest that this phase that we are currently in, and very near the end of, was ever intended to be used to implement a deal that was already agreed.

Indeed, the only way in which that is actually the case, is that the transition period is also the period during which the protocol on Ireland/N.Ire must be implemented, but that’s another matter.

And now I’ve got that off my chest, I’ll go and do something useful.