it wouldn't be a guarantee

it would have been a pragmatic recognition that a no-exit backstop would never be politically acceptable to the UK.

Neither party would have ever have exercised it.

Heck all it really needed was to have widened out the scope of the existing escape clause (the one that says either party can break for societal changes etc) or firming up the existing provision that was to the effect that the parties can exit if there's no longer a technical impediment to it.

Small drafting changes that would have been enough of a hook to get it through.

Or if even those were too unpalatable to the EU, an open admission that No Deal was always going to be inevitable.

Posted By: CWC, Dec 10, 13:32:06