Boris Johnson’s push to “get Brexit done” by December 2020 raises the risk of leaving without a deal – BBC

  • Mr Johnson has vowed to take the UK out of the EU on 31 January and strike a permanent trade deal within a year if he wins the election.
  • But Sir Ivan Rogers – who quit as the UK’s senior Brexit diplomat in 2017 – said this was “diplomatic amateurism”.
  • Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is promising to negotiate a new Brexit deal within three months, based on close alignment with the EU. This would then be put to the public in a legally binding referendum, alongside the option of staying in the EU.
  • If the Conservatives win the election, the UK could formally leave the EU by 31 January 2020.
  • However, even if the PM’s Brexit deal is approved by MPs, the UK will still enter into a transition period until at least December 2020 during which it would continue to follow all EU rules and regulations, as well as paying money into the EU budget.
  • In this period, Mr Johnson says he wants to reach an agreement with the EU on a future relationship – including a trade deal.
  • Under the withdrawal agreement, the transition period could be extended by one or two years, but the government has said it will not ask for such an extension.

Ex-EU ambassador says PM’s ‘strategy errors’ will make good trade deal harder to achieve – The Guardian

  • Less than three weeks before polling day, the man who resigned as the UK’s EU ambassador in January 2017, Sir Ivan Rogers, said Johnson was repeating Theresa May’s “strategy errors” and would soon find himself “unwisely” boxed in by his campaign promises.
  • When he launched the Conservative party manifesto on Sunday, Johnson repeated his promise not to extend an 11-month transition period that kicks in if the UK leaves the EU with the withdrawal agreement on 31 January 2020. Negotiating a trade deal with the EU in an unprecedentedly quick time is the centrepiece of the prime minister’s misleading pledge to “get Brexit done”.
  • “In practice, this prime minister is, for all his talk of getting Brexit done, now basically replicating the strategy errors of 2016 and 2017, which brought his predecessor down,” Rogers said.

ISDA calls for derivatives extension to avoid no-deal Brexit cliff edge – MLex

  • Derivatives traders and others should be given an extension to regulatory standards that provide relief for derivatives contracts in the event of a no-deal Brexit, the International Swaps and Derivatives Association has urged.
  • ISDA, which represents global financial institutions, has written to the European Commission and the EU’s markets watchdog to request an extension to the arrangement, due to expire on Dec. 31 this year.
  • For a 12-month period, these standards allow counterparties to transfer contracts from the UK to an EU counterparty in the event of a no-deal Brexit without triggering clearing or collateral requirements under the EU’s market infrastructure legislation.
  • ISDA’s letter, sent on Monday and published today, argues that the standards need extending due to the UK’s Brexit date changing to end-January 2020.