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EEA Efta is a dead option. It would have been a workable departure mechanism but it's too late now. The purpose was to safeguard trade. That ship has sailed. We can't suddenly dump the TCA for an EEA accession process. We have to work with what we've got.
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#Brexit
EEA could have been reverse engineered but of itself it could not have been a final destination. We could have subtracted freedom of movement as an EEA member but not as a joiner. That would be a bad faith move. We now have to rebuild a trade relationship within the TCA.
Such a process will have to stop short of FoM, but from there we can push for more access in conjunction with other EU FTA partners such as the CPTPP7. That combined pressure can help to open up the single market to become something broader than a European club.
From the position we were at two years ago, Efta EEA was desirable but not from the position we're in now, where we have already lost much of that trade and much of it will divert permanently. We missed the bus to save single market trade. Now we have to live with our choices.
To rejoin EEA down the line would result in a second wave of regulatory and diplomatic disruption, interrupting trade agreements we've only just rolled over/renegotiated, so it would be a similar piss off factor to when we joined the EEC, dumping our global trade partners.
What business needs now is certainly even if that means accepting diminished market access. Regulatory predictably is what matters. They can adapt, but radical shifts all the time leads to stalled investment. Soft Brexiters need to accept that what's done is done.
Brings me no pleasure to say any of this having been so invested on the EEA option but the circumstances have changed, as has the political landscape. The EU has invested enormous bandwidth for Brexit and is not remotely interested in entertaining another change of relationship.
The UK insisted on regulatory autonomy and sovereignty. The EU accepted this and will now leave us to reckon with the consequences. It's no use trying to wind back the clock. We now have to get busy and commit to the direction we chose, even though it's suboptimal.
It's already too late to save businesses who relied on frictionless trade with EU. Some can adapt but much only existed since the SM and evolved within it. Cutting ourselves off was easy to do, but not easily undone. Rejoining EEA doesn't restore contracts and supply chains.
That said, I will never stop reminding remainer MPs that they did in fact vote against remaining in the EEA - particularly Labour and the SNP. We all gotta have hobbies, right?
On a more personal note, as a leaver, I never liked the EEA option and TLA never saw it as an ideal end point. It was just the most pragmatic mode of leaving. Now that we have left, I would not wish to reverse it. EEA would have cushioned the blow, but it's all academic now.
Some hope to rejoin EEA, some hope to rejoin EU, but neither are going to happen. The tectonic plates of geopolitics have shifted. A close collaborative relationship is possible, desirable and necessary, but supranationalism has had its day.
The EU will continue, but the latest row indicates the EU will have to change. There are too may internal stresses. It no longer has the post-war momentum and reconciliation drivers. It's in the hands of a new generation - technocrats and trade lawyers, not visionaries.
It's now a much more soulless enterprise. Its founders and evangelists long retired or pushing up daisies. It is morphing into a technical government using trade as a pretext for asserting more power over ever strata of external relations. From there it will decline in popularity
The question for the future is how that technical competence and regulatory prowess can be persevered and and made subservient to democracy rather than a weapon of political integration for its own sake. Europe needs trade and cooperation - but it needs democracy too.
