How on earth did a Brexit trade deal come to be signed by Boris on a bit of paper from the loo?

Sign up to our free Brexit and beyond email for the latest headlines on what Brexit is meaning for the UK Sign up to our Brexit email for the latest insight Sign up to our Brexit email for the latest insight SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. The folder was handed back to Brandis as he headed back into the dinner.” Johnson has called Politico’s account of what happened “rubbish”, but even if the UK-Australia Free Trade Agreement wasn’t literally written on bog roll, it may as well have been, so much did it damage British agriculture. Like the latest deal with the Trans Pacific Partnership countries, and the separate deals with Japan, Kenya and others, the UK’s portfolio of trade deals add trivial amounts to British GDP, especially compared with the continuing damage wrought by the new trade barriers with the EU. It’s become a commonplace fact now that Johnson didn’t expect to win the 2016 Referendum, didn’t have a plan for after, had to have concepts such as a “customs union” and “free trade area” explained to him afterwards, and, according to Dominic Cummings, regrets Brexit ever happening at all. Some years hence, when Welsh, Scottish and English hill farmers face ruin as the baleful effects of the Australian trade deal come into maximum effect, they will at least understand how their livelihoods were sacrificed to secure a symbolic but useless and illusory “Brexit bonus” for the jokers who were running this country at the time.