Chris

We never even wanted all the benefits of membership when we were members, old bean. Remember the Schengen area, and the single currency?

The UK hasn't sought the 'benefits of membership' since the day these negotiations began, despite continuity remoaners endlessly demanding a 'soft Brexit' (i.e. not really leaving at all ... how's that for benefits).

What HMG has attempted to do is to strike a trade deal much the same as many other countries have managed to do. The UK's efforts have been modest, deliberately well short of either Norway or Switzerland - both of which enjoy many benefits of membership without being members - and modelled more on what Canada has been doing. Despite this, the EU has continued to try to extract concessions that seem to have been aligned with what they assumed we would ask for, rather than what we actually asked for.

The EU has simply been intellectually unprepared to conceive of a future relationship based on the UK as a fully independent sovereign third party. Take for example Emmanuel Macron, who even now seems to think it's reasonable for us to pay a price in sovereign control over our fisheries in order to placate his coastal voters at the next General Election. If we were negotiating the next big new treaty within the EU that might just about be a reasonable demand in the name of EU harmony. But, frankly, now it isn't our problem, no matter how much he wants to make it so. And so we are where we are.

I will be quite content with No Deal at the end of this month if that is what it takes for the EU to understand that nothing they had before is theirs by right. Maybe once the mud-slinging dies down early next year, and we are a completely detached and independent country, realistic negotiations can finally get underway.