Originally Posted by Chris

Details leaking out in this way looks like preparing for no deal - HMG wants us to understand just how unreasonable the EU was being. It won’t be hard for them to get some friendly tabloids to run the story in the way they want. To be fair the EU has made it easy for them by attempting to portray themselves as making a concession, when in truth the waters in question are under British sovereign control and access to them once the present agreement runs out is entirely in our gift. It seems the EU even now is ideologically incapable of understanding what us leaving the bloc actually means.