Shall we take a gentle amble down memory lane, a nostalgic trip back to the heady days of the referendum campaign of 2016? So many sweet promises were murmured into our ear, it can be hard to remember them all. No talk then of shelling out £33m to settle a legal case with Eurotunnel or ferry contracts for companies with no ferries, or spending billions to prepare for the cataclysm of a no-deal departure. No, back then it was all cash bonanzas of £350m a week and assurances that Brexit would be smooth and seamless – the Europeans needed us more than we needed them, after all – so that, by the time 23 June 2016 came around, voting leave seemed like a painless, risk-free option. Not only was there nothing to lose, there was so much to gain. And top of the list was a big, shiny trade deal with the United States of America.
“Within two years,” vowed the soon-to-be Brexit secretary, David Davis, a few short weeks after the vote, “we can negotiate a free trade area massively larger than the EU.” A deal with the US, along with China, would “give us a trade area almost twice the size of the EU”, he gushed, apparently unaware that, under European law, it was illegal for a Britain that had not formally exited the EU to so much as enter talks with those nations, let alone sign an agreement with them.
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