Stephen Booth on the Backstop

Stephen Booth, director of Policy and Research at Open Europe, has a piece at Conservative Home here about the May deal which includes the following:

"While the UK has secured many advantages, some aspects of the backstop are certainly hard to swallow. 

But the EU has also paid a high price for its insistence on a backstop. 

The UK’s commitments to maintain EU standards are far weaker than many member states would want and there is real concern in some capitals that the UK can use the backstop to secure privileged access to the Single Market in goods with very few obligations and, over time, at a competitive advantage. This is why, despite the lack of a firm time limit in the backstop, the EU is very unlikely to want to live with the arrangement indefinitely."

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