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Politico (16 October 2020)

Charlie Cooper

With weary predictability, the EU's refusal to budge at this week’s summit has produced a commensurate rhetorical blast from the U.K.

Boris Johnson’s response to the European Council’s summit conclusions — which gave no ground on the key remaining barriers to a post-Brexit free-trade agreement — was to say that the U.K. was now going to start planning for January 1 and a relationship with the EU “like Australia’s” (the U.K.’s geographically dubious way of referring to a no-trade deal scenario.)

So that’s the end of the negotiation then? Well, no. When pressed on whether he was walking away, Johnson said the EU was welcome to come to London for further talks, but only if “there’s some fundamental change of approach.”

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