Analysis: Britain has accepted ‘customs union-lite’ for North

Language over which talks stumbled an important shift in UK thinking

Mon, Dec 4, 2017, 18:55

Patrick Smyth in Brussels

UK prime minister Theresa May and Donald Tusk, president of the European Union, in Brussels on December 4th, 2017. Photograph: Dario Pignatelli/Bloomberg

There was some bewilderment in Brussels on Monday night when Jean Claude Juncker announced that his lunch with Theresa May had failed to produce the breakthrough that all expected. True, we had been warned that we should not take success as a fait accompli. There were still hurdles to be overcome, and both sides were playing hardball. And so it proved.

Whether the job will be done on Wednesday is unclear, but it does appear unlikely that the UK will be able to come up with a substantially different formula on the Border from that which it had signed up to but ultimately repudiated.

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Analysis: Britain has accepted ‘customs union-lite’ for North

Language over which talks stumbled an important shift in UK thinking

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