(Times paywall) Davis’s capitulation is only the start as No 10’s Brexit fantasy unravels
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/business/daviss-capitulation-is-only-the-start-as-no-10s-brexit-fantasy-unravels-wlc2w60zq
No one should have been surprised that the Brexit talks began this week with an immediate capitulation by the government over the question of sequencing.
The Brexit minister David Davis’s boast that the European Union’s refusal to discuss a trade deal until sufficient progress had been made on settling the UK’s outstanding budget obligations and securing the rights of EU and British citizens would be “the fight of the summer” 
was always empty bravado, given that the UK needs a deal far more than the EU.
.....
One fantasy that refuses to die is the notion that the EU might somehow be persuaded to water down the principle of free movement of citizens,
thereby allowing the UK to restrict EU migration while retaining membership of the union’s single market.
.....
For sure, there is anxiety over immigration in many EU countries — but this anxiety largely relates to migration from outside the EU.
It is also true that some countries would like to reform the rules around access to welfare.
But no other country shares the UK’s neuralgia about the principle of the free movement of people,
which is broadly accepted as the price that must be paid for the free movement of jobs.
When the single market in financial services was created in the 1990s,
tens of thousands of jobs migrated to London from Paris, Milan and Frankfurt, in turn creating hundreds of thousands of new jobs in other sectors.
*
Britain today is host to millions of European jobs in all industries and all parts of the country.
Why would any EU government agree to a deal that allowed the UK to retain European jobs while restricting them to British workers?
......
the price of a transitional deal is almost certain to be continued adherence to all EU obligations overseen by the ECJ.
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EU officials are adamant that it isn’t practically possible to negotiate a divorce deal and new trade deal in 20 months:*
even if the UK capitulated to all the EU’s demands,*
it would be likely to take a year to complete the detailed technical work on the withdrawal agreement and transitional arrangements, which would then need to be ratified,
EU officials say
Nor is it legally possible:
the EU is not allowed to negotiate a free-trade agreement with an existing member
and the EU’s negotiating team would need a detailed negotiating mandate from member states before trade talks could start.
This point was made repeatedly to Mrs May by Sir Ivan Rogers, the former UK ambassador to the EU,
who was frozen out by Downing Street for his efforts < we don't want facts or experts ! >
Yet it suits the British government to continue to insist that both the divorce deal and new trade deal can be agreed in less than two years.
One reason is that it allows Mr Davis to present his capitulation over sequencing as merely a tactical retreat,
on the basis that “nothing is agreed until everything is agreed”.
More importantly, it delays the moment when politicians must face up to the real choice:
whether to make the ultimate capitulation
— pay the Brexit bill in return for a transition deal with no guarantees on future trade
—or take the British economy over the cliff.