[Sephiroth]

The BBC item covers the matter but with little analysis. Here is a further quote from the Telegraph article:

There is a very clear conclusion to draw from the episode: trade arrangements which the EU found perfectly acceptable 20, 30, 40 years ago it no longer finds acceptable. The EU no longer simply wants free trade: it wants to muscle its way into many more aspects of its neighbours’ economic and social lives. Either you are a member of the EU, it is asserted, or we will try all we can to force you to become a de facto member.

In taking this attitude, the EU is threatening free trade altogether. It is much easier to do a free trade deal if you are not trying to poke your nose into every aspect of the other country’s affairs. Remainers told us that we would never have the might to do trade deals on our own – we needed to be part of the EU.

Yet the Swiss episode - eight years of negotiations for nothing - tells us something quite different. Over the coming years a nimbler, less-demanding Britain has the opportunity to open up trade with the rest of the world much more successfully than has the EU. Indeed, with its growing protectionism and arrogance, the EU risks going backwards.