Professor David Phinnemore:

I will come back on one issue. We were asked about creativity and flexibility. If we look at what has been proposed in the protocol, we can see some levels of flexibility and creativity which I did not anticipate emerging. One example is Northern Ireland remaining in the customs territory of the European Union. It is almost unprecedented, certainly as far as the EU is concerned, to have part of a non-member state in the EU's trade regime. It is also almost unprecedented in an international context.

An issue which we have not touched on today and which, unfortunately, has not featured much in the British debate about Brexit is that it is not simply about what can be achieved in terms of what the UK wants and can deliver. Rather, they are both constrained by international regimes, notably the World Trade Organization, WTO, and international trade rules. The EU and UK cannot define exactly what sort of customs union arrangement they might have because WTO laws require that it covers substantially all goods. The fact that the EU is willing to consider Northern Ireland remaining in the customs territory is a departure, with the exception of Hong Kong, from established practice in the WTO.

We also see an element of creativity and flexibility in that in the protocol the assumption is that Northern Ireland, if the protocol came into operation, would have free trade in agricultural goods with the EU. I am not aware of any non-member state of significant size which has free trade in agricultural goods with EU. Certainly there is no sub-national territory of a non-member state which is afforded that privilege. Yet the EU, through the protocol and the maintenance of all-island supply chains in what is an increasingly integrated agricultural market, is willing to essentially extend the Single Market in agricultural goods to include all of the island of Ireland. We can see there is flexibility there.

Part of the issue for the British Government is that the language of flexibility and imagination is reserved for the Irish dimension, that is, this island. That has been repeated on a number of occasions by Michel Barnier.

There is a willingness to be flexible and imaginative, but it is for a particular geographical part of the United Kingdom.