Monday 3 February 2020 15:24, UK
The UK's trade negotiations with the EU will determine if the US secures a greater influence within Europe
Prepare yourself for deja vu all over again.
The speeches from Boris Johnson and Michel Barnier on Monday are a reminder that when it comes to Brexit, for all the chatter of the past three and a half years the biggest questions - the ones concerning our economic futures - have yet to be resolved.
The nature of Britain's future relationship with the European Union, the extent of control Brussels will have over our regulations and standards, our ability to strike deep, ambitious trade deals with new countries, our ability as individuals to travel and work overseas.
All this stuff, which we've already spent a long time talking about since we voted to leave the EU, still has yet to be settled.
What's changed is that Britain is now formally out of the EU and therefore is now able to start negotiating it all.
This stuff - the future relationship negotiations - is perhaps the most difficult of all the tasks facing this country, yet Mr Johnson has set an incredibly ambitious deadline to get it done: by the end of the year.
Actually in practical terms that works out at less than ten months since if there's a deal to be done it needs to be nailed down by late November to give the European Parliament time to ratify it.
Now in one sense that's an almost impossible task, after all most trade deals take years, not months, to negotiate.
However this is not any trade deal. In most trade deals the parties begin with their trade arrangements - tariffs, regulations etc - in a different place and aim to converge. In this case the UK and EU start from the same place and need to agree to diverge in future.
Some argue this means the deal could be agreed far more quickly. Then again, others argue that the key dynamic in most trade deals is the incentive of doing a deal that will boost trade and generate more economic growth.
In this case the eventual deal will, on the basis of nearly every economic analysis, leave both sides at least a little bit worse off. Whether you believe a deal can be done depends on how you balance those particular dynamics.
However, there is at least one important thing that has changed in recent months. Britain has a new government.
It has a new prime minister who is happy to see Britain have a looser relationship with Europe than in the future.
Think about it: only a year ago the then UK prime minister wanted a relationship with Europe which was close enough that there would be little divergence in future years.
The government's own economists put the cost of it at around 0.6% off GDP (eg in a few decades' time Britain's national output would be 0.6 per cent smaller than had it stayed in the EU).
Today we have a PM who wants a far more distant relationship - a trade deal akin to the kind of free trade agreement Europe has with Canada.
According to those same government calculations that kind of agreement would knock 4.9% off the long-term level of GDP. Whether or not you believe economists' sums, this shift is nonetheless a significant one.
But whereas this time last year parliament could be counted on to attempt to intervene to block anything MPs believed would damage the UK economy, this time around the government has such a healthy majority that they will presumably face no parliamentary challenge.
This is such an important shift it is worth dwelling on for a moment.
Over the past few years the battle over Brexit was largely centred on Westminster. It was about an internal conversation, between hard and soft Brexiteers (or remainers). Now, like it or not, we are all hard Brexiteers.
The UK voted for a government set on a more distant relationship with Europe and today's speeches from Mr Johnson and Mr Barnier made it clear that the coming battle will not be fought in Parliament but will be fought between London and Brussels.
Tempting as it might be to presume that in this coming battle there will be one side in the right and the other in the wrong, there are only shades of grey. On the one hand Mr Barnier is attempting to impose rules (the level playing field) that go well beyond anything you'd see in a typical free trade agreement. He is unapologetically holding Britain to a higher standard that it would for Canada and Japan.
On the other hand, Mr Johnson is guilty of cake-ism: he wants a close economic relationship with Europe but doesn't want to be legally bound by any of the tough regulatory rules Europe wants to impose in exchange.
This seems unrealistic.
To give you an example, at some point Britain will have to choose whether, for instance, it wants to lean in an American direction on agricultural standards or stick with European rules and risk not getting a comprehensive trade deal with the US.
Which is a reminder that while this battle is about the economic destiny of the UK and the EU, it is also about something else. In the years to come which trading bloc will set the rules and standards everyone else has to follow: will it be Europe or America?
The powers that be on both sides of the Atlantic see today as the beginning of a test case that will determine the balance of the global trading and regulatory system for decades to come.
