UK raises estimate of gains from EU trade deal

Draft texts of three UK–EU agreements — on food and agriculture, emissions trading and youth mobility — have been circulated among the EU's 27 member states, according to the BBC, ahead of a Brussels summit on November 20. The Treasury has raised its estimate of what the package could add to the economy, from 0.3 percent of GDP to 0.4.

The substance is paperwork removal. The food and agriculture text would strip out the border checks and duplicate processes that appeared when Britain left the EU's regulatory framework, with companion texts on emissions trading and youth mobility extending the arrangements further. Regulation tends to survive until its cost lands on a number someone in government is forced to count; here the number is GDP, the Treasury has just revised it upward, and the red tape is being dismantled by the same state that erected it. Prime Minister Andy Burnham calls 0.4 percent "a number that you cannot ignore", and says the deals could add billions more to the economy than previously suggested.

The politics around the number is a contest of nerve. Burnham fought a by-election in Leave-voting Makerfield on a promise not to re-run Brexit arguments, a route that carried him into No 10, and now says both the constituency and the country have changed their minds since 2016. Tory leader Kemi Badenoch warns against reopening the debates at all.

The Prime Minister's account of what replaced free movement is the bluntest item in his interviews. Before Brexit, he says, European migration was short-term: people came from Europe and went back. Since then, he says, longer-term settlement has arrived in bigger numbers — a flow he calls "the Boriswave". The mechanism the referendum was meant to shut down was replaced by a larger and permanent one, in his own words.

On the long-term relationship, positions arrived within days: Burnham has "not proposed freedom of movement coming back"; he called at the weekend for an "honest discussion" about its return; he answered "no" when asked whether he would allow it back without a referendum; he has signalled he could fight the next general election on taking the UK back into the EU; and Downing Street has clarified that he is "not leaning either way".

Voters, the Prime Minister insists, will be "the boss" of any long-term change. The drafts of the first instalment went to the 27 member states first.