Brexit. Why do Brits want Out of the EU?

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But Malcolm Turnbull, who began Australia’s ongoing trade negotiations with the EU just before his premiership ended in 2018, said his country’s current relationship was not one the UK should seek to emulate.

“It’ll be pretty disappointing, I think you’ll find out,” the former Liberal Party politician said on the BBC’s Question Time.

“We have obviously a deal with the EU on WTO terms, and there are really some very large barriers to Australian trade with Europe, which we’re seeking to address as we negotiate a free trade agreement with Europe.

"But Australians would not regard our trade relationship with Europe as being a satisfactory one.

“It’s our third-biggest trading partner collectively, because it’s such a big economy, but there are very big barriers to Australian exports of agricultural products in particular. There’s a lot of friction in the system in terms of services.”

“So be careful what you wish for,” he added. “Australia’s relationship with the EU is not one, from a trade point, that Britain would want, frankly.”

But, with an acting deadline of Sunday to bridge the perennial gaps of fishing rights and rules ensuring a “level playing field” within the EU’s single market, Mr Johnson said his Cabinet “agreed very strongly with me that the deal on the table is really not, at the moment, right for the UK”.

The prime minister lamented that under the deal on offer, which he said would leave the UK open to “punishments, sanctions, tariffs, or whatever” if its standards fell below the bloc’s, would leave the UK effectively “kind of locked in the EU’s regulatory orbit”.

While, as the prime minister pointed out, the EU is seeking to hold the UK to more stringent rules than other nations with which it has a free trade deal, such as Canada, many member states believe that as a potentially more significant trading partner, the UK poses a greater threat of distorting the balance of the single market, and thus requires tighter controls.

But the prime minister faces significant pressure from his party not to accept a deal which would undermine the UK’s newfound sovereignty.

Challenged on the prime minister’s “very pessimistic” comments earlier, justice minister Robert Buckland told the Question Time audience that Mr Johnson was merely “being very firm and erect on what we can’t accept”.

Despite the distance remaining, the prime minister said he had told his negotiators to “go the extra mile”, adding: “I will go to Brussels, I will go to Paris, I will go to Berlin or wherever to try to get this home and get a deal.

“But there’s always the possibility, the prospect of coming out on Australian terms, which I believe are very good terms and we can prosper mightily in that future, which is just around the corner, and there are all sorts of amazing opportunities for this country.

“And so what I told the Cabinet this evening is to get on and make those preparations. We’re not stopping negotiating, the talks will continue, but looking at where we are, I do think it’s vital that everybody now gets ready for that Australian option.”

Business travellers will face fines of up to €20,000 (£18,240) if they do not apply for special permits for visits to conferences or exhibitions in the European Union if there is no Brexit deal for the service industry, industry leaders have warned.

“What you can’t do post-Brexit as a third-country national is simply think that you can get on Eurostar and rock up as you did before when we were a member state of the EU, you can’t just do that,” said Tim Thomas, a consultant with specialist firm International Employment Mobility Consultancy.

Make UK, which represents some of the biggest manufacturers in the UK, said it is concerned that the issue of business travel for service engineers will not only arise in a no-deal scenario but could arise if a trade deal comes home without a full services section.

Service engineers are the army of workers who are called out at short notice to EU factories, offices and industrial sites to fix everything from hospital scanners to lifts and aircraft parts.

“There is a real nervousness about it among our members,” said Ben Fletcher, director of Policy at Make UK. “All the focus is on goods and there is just not enough detail on this to make our members feel comfortable.”

“One firm has told us that in an average month they have about 10,000 people movements … to go and do service-related work across the EU,” he said.

He declined to identify the company but said they had a “very large manufacturing base in the UK” and had heavy duty machinery in factories and equipment inside aircraft that needed servicing regularly.

Any barriers to a company’s service-level agreements could impact their ability to sell their products to the EU, said Fletcher.

“A service-level agreement would sometimes guarantee a service engineer, present within hours rather than days,” he said. “There is a real nervousness about how that can work post-Brexit.”

The threat is a consequence of the UK’s decision to quit the single market as part of the hard Brexit the government is pursuing.

Time-limited travel trips and a deal for services were part of the negotiating objectives said out by the government earlier this year.

In a non-negotiated outcome, UK visitors will have to “navigate the rules of 30 different countries” said Thomas, with different regulations in each and heavy prices to pay for non-compliance.

Posted workers who do not have permits currently can face fines “typically of between €10,000 and €20,000 per worker for non compliance”, according to Thomas. But enforcement in some countries has been branded punitive with fines of up to €50,000 in Austria.

To add to the red tape challenge, the rules in each country will be different. “Some countries will allow you attend a trade show, others will allow you to attend but not exhibit while others will allow you to exhibit but not conclude a contract,” Thomas said.

“I think most people are still in a state of partial or total disbelief when they hear about this.”

The threat is a consequence of the UK’s decision to quit the single market as part of the hard Brexit the government is pursuing.

The EU didn't work out at all well for the UK, and that's what brexit is all about.

It didn't work out well for many other nations, Greece being the obvious, but not the least.

Really? Mind naming the "many others"?

Germany's economy is hurting mostly at present, because of the trade "war" between China and the US of A.

EU leaders have been told by Ursula von der Leyen that Britain exiting the transition period without a trade and security deal is now the most likely outcome.

During a 10-minute briefing at the end of an all-night summit in Brussels, the European commission president refused to put a percentage on the chances of agreement but told the leaders there was a “higher probability for no deal than deal”, sources said.

With the Sunday deadline agreed by Von der Leyen and Boris Johnson looming, Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, said all capitals should agree a common line in the event of the negotiations ending in failure over the weekend.

Ireland’s prime minister, Micheál Martin, whose country would be the EU member state most impacted by the lack of a deal, emphasised the damage that would be reaped if the negotiators in Brussels could not agree on terms.

He repeated the EU mantra, however, that a deal would not be at any price given the risk to European businesses if their British counterparts were to benefit from lower environmental, social and labour standards while enjoying zero tariff terms for their exports into the bloc.

Von der Leyen had updated the exhausted heads of state and government following an all-night discussion over the bloc’s greenhouse gas target for 2030.

An EU official said the Brexit negotiations were proving difficult in the final days and that the “probability of a no deal is higher than of a deal”. “Negotiations resuming today,” the official added. “To be seen by Sunday whether a deal is possible.”

China will be Germany's most important trading partner for the fifth time in a row.

Boris Johnson has been snubbed by Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron after he requested a phone call with them to try and unblock Brexit talks.

A senior EU official said the request for a three-way call on Monday was rejected because all negotiations should go via the European Commission rather than individual leaders.

The claim, which is not being denied by the UK side, comes as Commission president Ursula von der Leyen told leaders at a summit in Brussels that a no-deal was now more likely than not.

Exclusive: two vessels to be deployed at sea with two on standby in case EU fishing boats enter EEZ

Four Royal Navy patrol ships will be ready from 1 January to help the UK protect its fishing waters in the event of a no-deal Brexit, in a deployment evoking memories of the “cod wars” in the 1970s.

The 80-metre-long armed vessels would have the power to halt, inspect and impound all EU fishing boats operating within the UK’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ), which can extend 200 miles from shore.

Naval sources said the deployment had been long planned but it comes after Conservative ministers quietly doubled the total fleet of patrol ships from four to eight, partly in case of a crisis caused by a no-deal Brexit. “We have done a lot of work to ensure we are ready for every eventuality,” one insider said.

Although the offshore patrol ships carry machine guns, they would not be expected to use weapons against EU fishing boats. Instead they would aim to run alongside a vessel believed to be breaking the rules, boarding it for inspection if deemed necessary.

In extreme cases, an EU boat could be impounded and taken to the nearest UK port. “Nobody is going to be firing warning shots against French fishermen; firearms are only used when there is danger to life,” the navy source said.

Visiting the northeast, Mr Johnson ignored official forecasts that a no-deal will swipe £40bn from the UK economy, putting 300,000 people out of work, and warnings of higher food prices.

Describing the outcome as now “very, very likely” – having dismissed the chances as a “million-to-one against” last year – he said it was “a solution that I think would be wonderful for the UK”.

A no-deal Brexit is likely to end in “a punch up” in the Channel over fishing rights, a former First Sea Lord is warning – suggesting the Royal Navy needs the power to board EU vessels.

Lord West said it was “absolutely appropriate” for the government to prepare for the worst with the deployment of four extra patrol ships to intercept vessels in British waters next year.

However, the retired Chief of the Naval Staff suggested existing powers might not be enough, saying: “You can push vessels aside, you can cut their fishing tackle.

“But, actually boarding these foreign ships, they will need to pass a little thing through parliament to give authority to actually board and get on them.

“There is no doubt that, if you are a fisherman who has fished for years, they are – like our fishermen – quite stormy people and you get a bit of a punch up.”

But the Conservative chair of the Commons defence committee condemned the “absolutely irresponsible” sabre-rattling, as prospects for a Brexit agreement fade.

Tobias Ellwood attacked the prospect of “our overstretched Royal Navy squaring up to a close Nato ally over fishing rights”, when “Russian drone activity” is the real threat.

“Our adversaries must be really enjoying this blue-on-blue,” Mr Ellwood told BBC Radio 4.

“This isn’t Elizabethan times anymore. This is global Britain – we need to be raising the bar much, much higher than this.”

There are also huge doubts over whether the UK, even with extra patrols, has the power to police to 80,000 square nautical miles of British waters currently used by hundreds of EU fishing boats.

The 80-metre Navy vessels will be deployed after January 1, when the UK becomes “an independent coastal state”, to police up to 200 nautical miles from shore.