The chances of a Brexit deal have receded significantly over the summer. Inside No 10, they now think there is only a 30 to 40 per cent chance that there will be an agreement. The sticking point isn’t fish — I’m told that there is a “deal to be done” there — but state aid, the question of how much freedom Britain should have to subsidise companies and industries. This country has long been sniffy about the idea of “picking winners” and uses state aid relatively rarely. It made up 0.34 per cent of GDP — less than half the EU average of 0.76 per cent according to the European Commission’s State Aid Scoreboard.

Source: The Times September 03, 2020 16:07 UTC