Within minutes of it being announced that UK and EU officials have agreed on a new draft political declaration on the future trading relationship, the document leaked. Guido brings you the new 26 page document, up from 7 pages last week. Whilst none of this political declaration is legally binding, it does set out the direction of travel…

Key updates include a commitment to consider a ‘Max Fac’ “alternative arrangement for ensuring the absence of a hard border on the island of Ireland” and changing the original seven page documents’ commitment to “establish ambitious customs arrangements that build on the single customs territory” to an even more ambiguous commitment to “build and improve on the single customs territory”. Guido thinks he and the EU might have a different definition of what an ‘improvement’ on the ‘single customs territory’ would look like…