Brexit: It may be that both sides are right in this increasingly bitter and seemingly insoluble controversy – and that is where the problem lies, suggests Ivor Gaber

BREXIT deadlines come and go and even if tomorrow isn’t really the final, final one, there’s no escaping the fact that come January 1 we are out, deal or no deal.

So how has it come about that we are now in a situation in which we are heading for a no deal that both the EU and the UK accept will be damaging, though far more to us than to them.

The answer, I believe, is because the negotiations are not really about fish, or trade or any of the other unresolved issues but are about two principles that

neither side believe they can sacrifice.

For Britain, and particularly Boris Johnson, the principle of sovereignty seems to trump all other considerations.

This is irrespective of the fact that we already cede sovereignty to a host of international organisations, including to Nato over defence and to a host of United Nations agencies over a range of issues such as telecommunications, health and “the law of the sea”.

For the EU the key principle they see themselves fighting for is the single market

(which Mrs Thatcher keenly supported).

The 27 member states see it as their crowning achievement, allowing 450 million people to work and trade as a single unit.

They fear that giving the UK, what they see as, special terms could be the thin end of the wedge, threatening the future of the single market and even the EU itself.

And yet “principles” can be negotiable.

Until a few weeks ago it seemed that principled objections to Northern Ireland having a different trading status from the rest of the United Kingdom was unthinkable.

But just days ago Michael Gove returned from Brussels to proudly announce a deal that essentially leaves Northern Ireland in the single market and the European customs union, something we were told would never happen.

The agreement means that there will now be some checks on goods moving between the province and the mainland but there will be no hard border with the Republic and the Good Friday Agreement will not have been breached.

So why have the two sides not been able to show the same flexibility about the main issue of a trade agreement?

And here one comes up against something even more problematic than principles – emotions.

In this country Brexit has become something greater than just a matter of political opinion, it has become an emotional divide– a divide that entails far more than simply being about our

trading relations with the rest of Europe.

It encompasses a whole range of other issues, sometimes called a culture war.

But there’s also emotion on the European side.

For the EU there is a deep sense of unhappiness, bordering on betrayal, about the British decision to leave the Union and the last thing many member states want is for the UK to be seen to be being rewarded with a trade deal better than any that has so far been granted to other non-member countries.

So where do we go from here (assuming that no agreement is reached by Sunday)?

I have no crystal ball (as perceptive readers might have noticed) but one way forward might be to accept the inevitable, allow the no deal scenario to unfold and then, after a few months in which the harsh realities of being outside (and unattached) to the EU begin to make life even more difficult than it has been under Covid,

then maybe opinions will begin to shift.

Opinion polls – and I am as aware as anyone of their limitations – now show a significant majority of people think that leaving the EU was a mistake.

But that ship has sailed and there’s no clambering back on board, at least not for the foreseeable future.

The immediate outlook is grim. Adrift from the EU we can no longer look to the United States to cut us a swift and comprehensive trade deal, that ship also sailed with the election of Joe Biden.

And similarly all those other major countries that we had been assured would be queueing up to sign a deal – India and Australia to take two such examples – seem

to be showing a marked lack of interest.

So my guess – and it is no more – is that come the middle of next year, as the realities of no deal begin to bite, talks will resume and this time there could be a better ending. Maybe.

Ivor Gaber is professor of political journalism at the University of Sussex and a former political correspondent based at Westminster