Time for Boris Johnson to take a deep breath

For more than two years Boris Johnson has been saying that he favours a ‘Canada style’ free trade deal between the UK and the EU, but without ever offering any numerical estimate of the economic benefits such a deal would secure for the UK.

Nor as far as I know has any part of government ever published official projections of the potential benefits, similar to those for a free trade deal with the US, which report can easily be found by putting ‘UK-US Free Trade Agreement’ into Google.

(According to which official projections the long term benefit would in fact be trivial, a off-one gain between 0.02 percent and 0.36 percent of GDP.)

That is why I recently resorted to a Freedom of Information Request in an attempt to get this vital information into the public domain before our MPs find that they are presented with a fait accompli, a trick repeatedly employed over EU treaties.

Meanwhile, a new report entitled ‘The economic impact of no-deal: a more balanced assessment’ suggests that the costs of Brexit have been greatly exaggerated, and ‘the difference between an FTA-based Brexit or no-deal is relatively small’.

Moreover it should be understood that a free trade deal would not eliminate friction as goods crossed the borders; the removal of routine border controls within the EU only came with the Single Market, not with the original Customs Union.

So there is little point in continuing with these apparently never-ending trade negotiations with the EU, with one

‘deadline’ after another being missed;

Boris Johnson needs to screw up his courage, call a halt and take us out on WTO terms.

Dr D R COOPER Belmont Park Avenue

Maidenhead