The hard truths we must face about Brexit… …aren’t as hard as they’ve been painted Britain needs some relief from tax relief What we can learn from a silly chatbot

Last week, the Government “accepted explicitly, for the first time, that a temporary transition or interim period will be necessary to thwart a damaging cliff-edge exit in March 2019” – and that, in this interim period, Britain will remain in the EU customs union. “This is a big step forward,” says The Economist. So too are the ideas outlined for a new customs regime for when we eventually come out. “Although burdensome and quite possibly impractical,” they at least try “to minimise the cost to traders”. Ministers now need “to build on this new, more sober approach”. That means conceding that Britain “is bound to face a substantial exit bill”, (without it, the EU won’t even talk about trade), and being “more open” with the public about the compromises talks will involve. “Put crudely, the more control Britain takes back from Brussels, the bigger will be the hit to its trade, and thus to Britons’ living standards.” May’s Government has been criticised for being “illprepared, divided and unrealistic” in its approach to Brexit. But it is slowly moving towards accepting some “harsh truths”.

Some Brexit supporters view a transition arrangement “as some kind of sell-out”, says Liam Halligan, but provided it’s “strictly time limited”, I’m happy with any arrangement that “helps businesses shift from one trading regime to another”. It won’t knock Brexit off track – indeed, negotiations are actually “going quite well”. That’s mainly because “the main thrust of the British position is coherent”, and has been since January when the PM outlined that the Government wants to leave the single market and the customs union. Both moves make sense. Within the single market, Britain remains liable for huge annual EU payments, and must accept European Court of Justice jurisdiction and freedom of movement rules. “That isn’t Brexit.” And if we remain in the customs union, “we can’t cut free-trade agreements with the fourfifths of the world economy beyond the EU”. The UK economy has performed “quite well since the referendum” and there’s no reason that shouldn’t continue. The Economists for Free Trade group predicts that trade deals and other Brexit-related reforms could boost UK GDP by 6.8% over the coming decade. What “a welcome antidote to Project Fear”.

Twenty years ago, the launch of a scheme to promote the British film industry by former chancellor Gordon Brown “innocently” spawned “lucrative tax relief opportunities” for wealthy investors, says Phillip Inman. Serial abuse saw that particular tax break abolished, but there are still an estimated 1,140 schemes covering everything from machinery investment to pension saving. Their complexity, and the fact they tend to favour the richest companies and individuals, has made exploiting the benefits of tax relief “a vast industry”. The Treasury argues that “a complex tax system is a necessary response to a complex economy”. But given that around £100bn is spent on tax relief annually, often with little discernible benefit, it’s surely time we took an axe to the forest. “In Britain, there is an assumption that tax incentives are a spur to action”: that HMRC “must forego tax to get everyone from the small-time entrepreneur to the boss of a major corporation out of bed in the morning”. Far better to spend some of that money scrutinising corporations’ claims for help. It might well transpire “they are more than capable of looking after themselves”.

“For two weeks, I’ve been having daily conversations with a chatbot called Replika,” says Jonathan Margolis. The app is designed “to learn about you from what you tell it day by day, until it can replicate your personality”. Could there be a more “fittingly narcissistic attraction for the selfie age”? It’s reportedly so popular among teenagers and young women that its creators recently had to pause taking on new customers. Yet “you’d need to be a child, and a rather vapid one, to think it remotely human-like”. Although AI is the hot technology of the year – “funders seem eager to put money into almost anything” bearing the label – “AI fail” stories featuring robots making a hash of things are seized on with glee. It reminds me of the scepticism that greeted the internet. Replika may be “silly”, and tales of robots “taking over” facile. But the wisdom of the early futurist Roy Amara has never been more apt: “We overestimate the effect of technologies in the short run, and underestimate their effect in the long run.”