Such a free-trade agreement would allow most goods to flow relatively freely but doesn't have any provisions for services.
Even not having service trade isn’t a great disaster. Companies with sizeable EU revenue can just set up a European subsidiary (in Ireland, etc) to conduct business in Europe from the UK (or anywhere).
(Though I accept it’ll be a pain for e.g. finance companies which the EU requires to be based within the EU,)
Startups eespecially aren’t held back by these rules right now, they just sell everywhere in USD (and at some point when they’re big enough create an EU subsidiary).
The goods thing would be a real issue, if everything on supermarket shelves became 1.5x as expensive. So as long as that’s solved it’ll be fine.
What kind of services does the UK export which do not fall into the finance category?
It's not all about the money, e.g regulations like DPD and soon GDPR can affect this. Legal departments of our customers won't touch anything non-EU based with a 100 mile pole.
Or anywhere ... Why would you go to the bother and expense of being in UK, puppeteering a company in the EU. You just move to the EU and save yourself the cost/hastle.
Quite possibly, but I'm not familiar enough with CETA to know the answer to this question - does CETA restrict Canada's ability to enter other trade agreements with third-party nations?
The partial Single Market membership mentioned in the article does come with that proviso - that the UK cannot make trade deals with other nations, which is why I think it's an untenable position.
Granted, if the EU position is sabotaged by some members (as the Polish PM was hinting towards), maybe the UK can get a better deal than what implied by the article. But if the EU stands together, I see little reason for them to be considerate to quitters.
The biggest problem of the EU is also its biggest strength. It needs unity for this. So if Poland goes rogue nothing happens, article 50 kicks in and no deal happens. That indirectly strengthens the EU now quite a bit ironically enough.
Poland's consent is not required
But a trade deal with the UK does not. We just went through this with CETA.
CETA is a mixed agreement: 99% of it is covered under the CCP and went into effect before it had even been voted on by most national parliaments
you can confirm for yourself from the EU's own website on CETA (http://ec.europa.eu/trade/policy/in-focus/ceta/index_en.htm):
On 21 September 2017 CETA entered into force provisionally. As such most of the agreement now applies.
National parliaments in EU countries – and in some cases regional ones too – will then need to approve CETA before it can take full effect.
Interestingly enough, Australia and New Zealand have a bilateral work agreement, allowing citizens of either country to be instant residents of the other State upon arrival.