The Conservative party's uneasy truce with Brussels

That’s why longstanding Conservative Brexiter Andrea Leadsom and the EU ambassador to London Pedro Serrano were in surprising agreement at a Centre for European Reform fringe event this week when I shared a platform with them both. Serrano was only too happy to endorse Leadsom’s soothing line that the TCA was the “deepest trade deal the EU has ever done” — the same line, incidentally, that is used by Lord David Frost — while repeatedly reminding the audience there was no appetite to reopen it.