They did not agree to the backstop; they agreed to the joint report that talked about full alignment. [Interruption.] Does the hon. and learned Lady want to listen to the answer? She will remember me standing at the Dispatch Box saying that we interpreted full alignment as outcome alignment and relating directly to the issues in the north-south strands—principally, agriculture, transport, and environment as it applies to the single electricity market. Those are the primary strands, and they are eminently soluble, by arrangements that already exist in Northern Ireland—for example, the carve-out on environmental legislation. It is a very straightforward issue, but it has been blown up into something else by the other side of the negotiations.
The risk and costs of having a customs border are less than is being claimed, and what we would give up to join a customs union is much more than is imagined. The EU is a slow and not very effective negotiator of free trade agreements. We keep hearing about its size and negotiating power, but the fact that it represents 28 different countries means it comes up with sub-optimal outcomes all the time, and actually we are the country that does least well out of the EU’s free trade agreements. They almost never involve services, for example, which are our primary trade. The EU is a slow and not very effective negotiator of trade deals.
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We will be smaller, of course, but many countries that are smaller than us do very, very good trade deals. Switzerland is an obvious example. Its deals are much more effective than ours. By the way, we are bigger than the bottom 18 European countries put together, so we are not small by any normal measure of the word. We also have huge advantages over and above our economic weight. We have the English language and English law and we are leaders in a whole series of areas, such as life sciences, artificial intelligence, the internet and medicine. We are one of the leading countries in terms of intellectual exports—“services” encompasses intellectual exports—and in that the English language is the most powerful weapon possible.
In trying to deal with a problem that is less bad than its supporters think, the proposal in the new clause would throw away a power and a right that is incredibly important—much more important than they think. They are trying to defend a false past and giving up a real future. There we are.