The heat has been turned down on UK’s EU divorce, but trade expeditions such as Liam Fox’s meeting with the Philippines’ leader pose awkward questions

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The big picture

After the drama of last week’s delivery of the article 50 letter, followed almost immediately by mutterings about war over Gibraltar, there was a sense of consolidation, and of all sides digging in for what will be a long political haul.

Theresa May hosted Donald Tusk, the European council president, at Downing Street, their first meeting since pressing the button for the departure process.

While the prime minister used the seemingly cordial chat to talk down any rumblings about conflict and to emphasise her hope of continued good relations with Brussels, Downing Street did reiterate there would be “no negotiation on the sovereignty of Gibraltar without the consent of its people”.

Reinforcing the message further, earlier in the week a Royal Navy unit had ordered a Spanish patrol boat, Infanta Cristina, to leave Gibraltar’s disputed territorial waters, which it did.

The other big event came on Wednesday, when the European parliament voted by a heavy margin to set out its hoped-for “red lines” on the Brexit process, a relatively tough stance which, among other areas, called for phased negotiations, in which discussions of a future trade deal must await progress on the departure settlement.

Speaking to MEPs the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, said the insistence on dealing with the UK’s divorce bill first was necessary:

A single financial settlement, as a result of UK commitments to the EU, and the EU commitments to the UK – there your resolution is very clear. We do not seek to punish the UK, but simply ask the UK to deliver on its commitments and undertakings as a member of the EU.

The view from Europe

Many in Europe had other things on their mind over the past week, not least their response to the horrific chemical weapons attack on a rebel-held area in Idlib, Syria, and the retaliatory US missile attack on a Syrian airbase.

Tuesday, meanwhile, saw the further wavering of attention on Brexit in France with a marathon TV debate between the country’s presidential hopefuls.

With the French going to the polls in less than a fortnight, and Germany starting to gear up for its general election in September, there is an argument that little substantive progress will be made during coming months.

In fact, the French presidential debate was an interesting indicator of how little Brexit registers amid the fervour of domestic politics. The only one of the 11 candidates to mention it was the anti-EU populist François Asselineau, currently polling on about 0.5% support.

Meanwhile, back in Westminster

With parliament in recess, this section could perhaps be temporarily titled, “Meanwhile, back in countries with troubling human rights records but the offer of trade deals.”

Theresa May led the way with a trip to Saudi Arabia, where she batted away concerns about potential war crimes by Saudi forces in Yemen, among other issues, by arguing a constructive, trade-based relationship was better than “standing on the sidelines and sniping”.

While, less controversially, the chancellor, Philip Hammond, was talking commerce in India, the international trade secretary, Liam Fox, had the dubious mission of meeting Rodrigo Duterte, the president of the Philippines.

Fox talked warmly of “shared values” – all very standard for most trade love-ins, but not when your host is behind a war on drugs that has seen 7,000 people killed, and has said he personally killed criminals during his 22 years as a mayor of Davao city, including throwing one suspect to his death from a helicopter.

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Read these

For a view on Gibraltar less framed in union flags and the need to protect the Rock from the Spanish, read this by Oliver Bullough on the territory’s status as a slightly shady tax haven:

In 1999, Vladimir Putin was angling to become president, a complex task considering the amount of money and violence in Russian politics at the time. He needed to talk to all the players and needed to do so somewhere unobtrusive, so he convened a meeting at an oligarch’s Mediterranean villa. This, however, caused a problem: how could he travel to southern Spain without alerting the Spanish, who might monitor the conversations and learn what was going on? Fortunately, there was a solution: Gibraltar. The then-FSB chief flew into the British territory, hopped on a boat and entered Spain illegally, on perhaps as many as five occasions. Russian spooks are not the only thing Gibraltar has smuggled across the border. According to media reports quoting a confidential EU investigation, the Rock imported 117m packets of cigarettes in 2013, enough for every Gibraltarian to smoke almost 200 a day. The cigarettes didn’t stay there, however; they, like Putin, were passing through. This epic smuggling operation may have cost EU countries €700m in lost tax revenues over four years. Britain’s response to Spain’s demand that it have a say over how Brexit affects Gibraltar has been one of almost universal fury, but it shouldn’t have been. If you imagine that, owing to some ancient treaty, Spain had a base in Dover, from which Russia’s chief spy had repeatedly sneaked into Kent, and smugglers had flooded the country with cheap fags, massively undermining our tax base, we would be pretty cross, too. It’s something of a wonder that Spain has put up with it for so long.

The Economist has been to Dover’s western docks to see how post-Brexit trade with the EU could look:

This is where trucks from non-EU countries arrive to clear customs. About 500 come here daily, from the Dover ferries and the Channel tunnel, and their clearance is rather less seamless. Drivers have to park and fill in a form at the freight clearance office. A computerised system known as the Customs Handling of Import and Export Freight (Chief) logs details automatically, indicating what the goods are and what the import duty might be, but it has to be checked. Even for lorries from countries with close trading relationships, like Switzerland, all this “can take anything from 20 minutes to an hour” from disembarking, says Tim Dixon of Motis, the firm that runs the operation. For countries operating under World Trade Organisation rules only, the process could take much longer. Ominously, the Motis office has a TV lounge, launderette and restaurant in case the drivers have to lie up for a bit.

Tweet of the week

The EU parliament’s chief negotiator gets somewhat misty-eyed as he bids the UK farewell in a speech to the chamber.