The EU’s attempt to row back from offering a Canada Style FTA backfired last night as senior academics slammed a new “horribly misleading” and “indefensible” graph from the Commission. The EU tried arguing the UK could not have a normal FTA because it does too much trade with the EU. As a result, they’re demanding we accept a subservient rule-taking relationship…

Unfortunately for the EU, the graphic they used to make their point massively distorts the data – showing artificially small bubbles representing the amount of EU trade with countries that are further afield. The Japanese bubble (€117.1 billion in 2018), for example, should be around one quarter the size of the UK’s (€516.6 billion in the same year). Instead, the Commission shrunk it to just one-sixteenth the size. That’s before the Japan-EU FTA came into effect…

David Spiegelhalter, professor of the public understanding of risk at Cambridge University, told Politico that the EU’s graph was “indefensible“, went against “standard graphical practice“, and was “the biggest mistake to make.” While a professor of applied statistics at the OU called the graph “horribly misleading.”

A senior Tory source ridiculed the EU’s graphic, telling Guido “The EU appear to have made a massive balls up. Let’s hope they are as good at negotiating as they are at PowerPoint.” The Government is sticking to its line – the EU can take a Canada deal or it’s Australia…

UPDATE: Analyst Harry Chisholm has re-made the EU’s graph with accurate numbers. It’s clear the EU wants to treat the UK very differently from countries that do similar amounts of trade with it. If a simple FTA would do for the US, the EU can’t explain why it refuses to countenance the same for the UK…