Internal Market Bill: the Government is still chasing unicorns

The provisions of the Internal Market Bill which expressly allow Ministers to breach international law – in rather more than a ‘very specific and limited way’ – are likely, in and of themselves, to make deals with the EU more difficult.

At a deeper level, what is more troubling is the UK government’s continuing insistence that a ‘hard’ Brexit is somehow compatible with unfettered access for all goods from the UK into the EU and vice versa.

It appears to be unable to grasp – or perhaps it is feigning an inability to grasp – the inexorable implications of the policy choices it made when it signed the Withdrawal Agreement and the Northern Ireland Protocol.