If the UK rejects what amounts to an ultimatum and exercises its right to trade on WTO terms, Brussels will seek to make this excruciatingly painful

When you strip away the pieties, the EU is stating that this country must accept the “ratchet clause” and swallow terms - dressed up as level-playing field clauses - that do not exist in normal trade agreements. This mechanism is intended to lock the UK into Europe’s regulatory and governing structure permanently.

If the UK rejects what amounts to an ultimatum and exercises its right to trade on WTO terms, Brussels will seek to make this excruciatingly painful rather than trying to reach a neighbourly modus vivendi.

Such coercive methods did succeed in snuffing out the Greek Spring of 2015 but that was because Greece had been shut out of the capital markets and had no sovereign lender-of-last-resort as a euro member.

The European Central Bank gradually (and illegally) cut off Target2 liquidity for Greek commercial banks until the financial system collapsed.

“The gigantic difference is that the ECB cannot shut down Barclays, RBS, Lloyds, and HSBC,” said Yanis Varoufakis, Greece’s former finance minister.

This country issues debt in its own sovereign currency and has the Bank of England at its back. You can get away with almost anything under the cover of QE.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard Telegraph 13 December 2020

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2020/12/13/greek-torture-wont-bring-britain-knees-brexit1/