It's deja vu all over again

It could be years ago, as the ticking clock is turned back/forward [I wish I'd never read French philosophy] in the latest complaint from Barnier:

Michel Barnier has suggested the UK is running down the clock in talks over the future trade and security relationship with the EU...Barnier appeared exasperated by the British team...Barnier cited four areas where progress had been “disappointing”, including on a deal for future trade in goods.

The areas include fishing, of course, and a regulatory role for the EU,  says the Times. 

UK responses seem pretty robust at the moment:

“We regret that the detail of the EU’s offer on goods trade falls well short of recent precedent in free trade agreements it has agreed with other sovereign countries,” [a UK] spokesman said. “This considerably reduces the practical value of the zero-tariff, zero-quota aspiration we both share.”... “If we are to make progress now, we need to focus on agreeing a future relationship that has a comprehensive [free trade agreement] at its core, like those the EU has agreed elsewhere. We support high standards. But there is no need for novel and unprecedented ‘level playing field’ rules, for example tying us to EU laws, or a role for the EU court. What the EU proposes is unlike anything agreed in other such FTAs and we will not agree to it here....“Finally, we are ready to work to agree a fisheries agreement which reflects our rights under international law to control our own waters, & provides for annual negotiations over access based on scientific principles. We won’t agree to continuing the Common Fisheries Policy.”

Most ominously of all for the EU, there might be some support for the view expressed by D Davies a week or two back, that the general depression of trade after corona might actually mitigate the worst effects of no deal. I imagine this turns on the argument that volumes of trade will be depressed anyway, and that innovation to beat supply problems with covid might also manage any arising with no deal?

A UK spokesman instead openly questioned the value of the deal being offered by Brussels when compared with a no-deal outcome.

Even the Graun editorial is prepared to see some drawbacks to EU membership:

Europe has struggled to make common cause against the virus. In particular, it has bickered over how to support the most affected European economies against the consequences of the lockdown. In spite of innumerable acts of cross-border solidarity on the medical front, the rich nations of Europe have proved reluctant backers of the continent’s embattled poorer economies...the EU’s southern member states are reluctant to borrow their way out of the problem, in part because they fear that to take on more debt would deepen the inequality between the EU’s south and north...this issue is urgent and could still pose existential questions, as Emmanuel Macron said this week, for the EU itself.

 Bureaucratic compromise is on the cards, but this time the GRaun seems less enthusiastic:

Ms von der Leyen said afterwards that the EU would be trying to create a funding mechanism that allowed for a balance of grants and loans....This will be anything but easy. Familiar disputes about the size of the EU budget have not disappeared. Indeed, the UK’s departure had made them trickier. Now, in time-honoured fashion, the EU has also kicked the can down the road over the recovery fund...

The issue might just be causing some more anxieties for Grudinista policy on extensions:

If the Brexit transition was to be extended into 2021, the UK would have to extend its budget contribution too. It is hard to see the current British government contributing to the EU recovery fund as well.

 So the Gruan has to offer its readers a nice simple ideological binary:

But if the choice for Britain lies between cooperation with a divided EU and cooperation with a United States led by a delinquent president who advocates ingesting disinfectant, it would be a no-brainer.