How bad could it get? America’s ugly election

Reopening has not been the disaster

many feared

Covid-19 in England

A summer break

Avoiding a spike

Confirmed covid-19 cases per 100,000 people

2020, seven-day moving average

Source: Johns Hopkins University CSSE

20

15

10

5

0

Sep

Aug

Jul

Jun

May

Apr

Mar

Feb

United States

Spain

Italy

Germany

France

Britain

O

n june

15th Boris Johnson promised to

put “a bit of oomph” into trade talks be-

tween Britain and the European Union so

as to reach an outline agreement in July. Yet

September has come with no sign of a deal.

Little progress is expected when the talks

resume in London next week. Indeed, Mi-

chel Barnier, the 

eu

’s chief negotiator, says

negotiations are going backwards and a

deal by year-end (when the standstill tran-

sition period ends) seems unlikely. The

end-October deadline, to allow time to

draft and ratify a treaty that will run to hun-

dreds of pages, is just eight weeks away.

This does not make no deal inevitable.

Brinkmanship on both sides is often for

domestic consumption. Progress has been

nugatory because the sticking points are

political and cannot be resolved within

current negotiating mandates. This applies

especially to the two hottest issues—fish-

eries and rules to stop one side using state

subsidies to undercut the other. Heads of

government have not engaged in the detail;

since they want a deal, many analysts ex-

pect a last-minute agreement when they

do. After all, this happened last year when

Mr Johnson signed the withdrawal treaty.

Yet this may be optimistic. Fisheries,

which account for less than 0.1% of 

gdp

,

might not scupper a deal, but rules to limit

state aid go to the heart of the new relation-

ship. Mr Johnson is allergic to 

eu

con-

straints on his freedom of action, and his

government has not set out its plans for

state subsidies. For its part, the 

eu

detects

an existential threat in opening up to an

untrammelled and competitive neighbour.

Never mind that Britain has in the past re-

sorted to state aid less than most countries,

or that 

eu

rules against it have been sus-

pended during covid-19.

As Sam Lowe of the Centre for European

Reform, a think-tank, notes, the economic

difference between a barebones trade deal

and no deal is not all that large. A deal

would avoid tariffs in sensitive sectors like

cars, but in either case disruption from

customs checks, lorry queues and intru-

sive non-tariff barriers would be substan-

tial. The biggest difference might be that,

under no deal, Mr Johnson’s team could try

to blame disruption not on the deal it had

done but on the 

eu

’s obstinacy.

Some argue that Mr Johnson’s growing

reputation for incompetence makes him

more likely to accept any trade agreement

he can get. If he cannot secure the “oven-

ready” Brexit deal he promised last year,

what can he do? Yet a weakened prime min-

ister who is again seen to be giving in to

Brussels bullies would also be vulnerable

to attacks from his own party hardliners.

Many now claim to be unhappy with the

withdrawal treaty, especially the customs

border it is erecting between Northern Ire-

land and Great Britain.

The parallel with Mr Johnson’s last-mi-

nute deal with Leo Varadkar, the Irish taoi-

seach, on the withdrawal agreement in Oc-

tober 2019 does not really work. The

timetable is tighter this time. Rejigging the

Northern Irish piece of the withdrawal

treaty was simpler and quicker than writ-

ing a new trade agreement. Last year, un-

like today, Mr Johnson was prevented by

Parliament from going for the alternative

of no deal. And as Georgina Wright of the

Institute for Government, another think-

tank, says, both sides are now better pre-

pared for the consequences.

Moreover, instead of the friendly Irish

in 2019 Mr Johnson now faces the implaca-

ble French. They have the most to lose from