The gathering of EU leaders in Brussels on Sunday was probably the most straightforward Council that there has ever been. Despite the rumblings about the French and Spanish going to hold proceedings up because of fishing access and Gibraltar, no objections made it to the floor in the Council headquarters on Sunday morning. Wall to wall news coverage followed marking the significant occasion of the UK agreeing the terms for leaving the EU. However, despite taking 18 months to get to this point, the real work starts now in trying to sort out a future trading relationship, assuming of course the UK Prime Minister can persuade enough members of parliament to approve it.

A future trading relationship is essentially the negotiation of a new trade deal and the transition period, in which it supposed to be done in, is ridiculously short. Even if the extension of up to two years is used, it would still require a huge effort to get the deal done. Trade deal negotiation is a slow, cumbersome process, for example the EU started talking with Mecrosr in 1999, and a deal is still not done. Canada, which was a relatively straight forward negotiation, ran for 8 years from 2007 until 2015 and has been in operation provisionally since September 2017.

The problem with the negotiation of a future trade deal between the EU and UK is that the UK will want as much of what it had as a member of the EU but ditching the freedom of movement of people and the EU Courts and negotiating its own trade agreements. The EU cannot allow what it calls cherry picking and has been talking about an all or nothing approach with terms of trade as a non member being less favourable than for members. Trying to square this circle will use months and years of negotiation time with no guarantee of success despite the good will that was talked about at Sunday's gathering of leaders.

The debate on the withdrawal agreement revealed that the EU team are formidable negotiators with the migration issue and the only major uncontested win the PM had. The most contentious issue in this agreement is the provision for the north to remain aligned with the EU in the event that the UK heads off on its own trade path. This backstop paves the way for trade to continue uninterrupted on the island of Ireland irrespective of what Britain does in terms of future trade deals that diverge from the EU.

This backstop has incensed unionist politicians in Northern Ireland but if it was ever necessary to bring it into play, it would be a disaster for Dublin as well. Ultimately the agri food industry on the entire island of Ireland needs access to the British market but if the backstop came into effect, only Northern Ireland would have uninterrupted access to the British market.

The need for Ireland to maintain access to Britain will mean the Irish voice will be very strongly in favour of a seamless future trading relationship. Interestingly, the leader of the main unionist party in Northern Ireland, Arlene Foster didn't dismiss a very soft Brexit in the shape of the deal Norway has with the EU as a member of the European Economic Area (EEA), the same as Iceland and Lichtenstein. The immediate problem is that this has a requirement for free movement of EU citizens which would be difficult for the UK. Also, Norway isn't in the customs union - keeping the UK in customs alignment would be essential to retain full, uninterrupted access to the British market.

Of course the immediate problem isn't the negotiation of future trading relationship over the next two or three years, it is persuading the UK parliament to support the withdrawal agreement in the next two or three weeks. That will be a huge task as the one thing that unites pro and anti EU MPs is a mutual dislike of the withdrawal treaty. The only sales pitch available to the PM is that it is a choice between the withdrawal treaty as presented or no deal which would cause unimaginable chaos. Sunday in Brussels was the easiest part!