Don't disagree that an SPS (and ETS) deal would help but by the govt's own analysis it only scratches at the surface of the economic costs

This trends suggest that, unless the government can soon demonstrate the benefits of the regulatory independence from the EU, it will increasingly struggle to justify its Brexit position, which significantly dampens trade with the UK’s closest partner while delivering few other benefits.

And on financial services, a number of consultations are promised on tweaking the existing rulebook – but in truth these are unlikely to have much, if any, impact on growth – and certainly do not offset the loss of access to the EU financial services market.

The UK, while broadly following the EU’s approach of trying to impose controls on big tech’s dominance of digital markets, has been somewhat less interventionist – reflecting the desire to secure a digital trade deal with the US.

Under this model of voluntary alignment, the UK will continue to drift from the EU despite not wanting to. Which raises the question of whether there are any benefits from the UK's regulatory freedom, which offset those costs. The two areas govt has zeroed in on are financial services and tech/AI.

But the key issue is capacity. The govt has announced plans to replicate new EU rules on vehicle safety and emissions testing. But there is yet to be a consultation – let alone legislation. Whitehall cannot move as fast as the Brussels machine - and so more and more gaps open by default over time.

Why? In some cases there's nothing the UK can do to avoid it. The UK cannot legislate to exempt itself from new EU trade defence measures on steel, for example. And in some cases (e.g. AI regs) it might not want to align.

In many goods areas (e.g. vehicles, product safety) the government is taking a (sometimes explicit) presumption in favour of voluntarily aligning with EU law as it changes – to avoid new complexity for UK-EU and GB-NI trade. But despite this there is still plenty of EU-led divergence occurring.

This chart sums up the challenge. There are lots of cases of the UK taking active steps to align with EU regulations – but there are even more cases where the EU has diverged and the UK has not followed suit