I'm sure the majority of the countries in the world operate under WTO rules, otherwise they wouldn't exist if it was just for Mauritania!
It is the EU who don't want a deal because they are frightened of the UK's potential success, meaning other member states may want to leave too. If the EU is such a wonderful club, why are they so afraid others will want to leave, surely, even Remainers can see this.
Even if we agreed to the transitional period, the situation would still be the same, just two years down the line and we would have been prevented from opening up other independent trade deals in that time. That's one reason why the withdrawal agreement is so bad.
Below is a very good article, if anyone is interested in reading it.............
.........'If anyone is trashing democracy, it’s the majority of MPs, hell-bent on overturning the result of the 2016 referendum. The latest dishonest excuse they’ve seized upon is stopping a ‘No Deal’ Brexit. The reality is most of them refuse to admit is that they want to stop Brexit altogether. They bleat about upholding parliamentary sovereignty. But only so they can surrender it to the EU. For the best part of the past five decades they have been content to sit back as the bulk of our laws and trading arrangements have been made by unelected foreign bureaucrats and judges.
Both parties, Conservative and Labour, were elected on a manifesto commitment to implement the result of the 2016 referendum. In the case of the Tories, they insisted no deal was better than a bad deal. They have now done a complete U-turn, thanks to the devious and duplicitous machinations of Theresa May, who suddenly decided that “No deal is better than a bad deal” actually meant the opposite, i.e. “A bad deal is better than no deal.” It’s not just the reputation of Parliament, Britain’s standing in the world as a beacon of democracy is being dragged through the mud. Three years and three months since a Tory government was given a clear instruction to get Britain out of the EU and all its works, it still hasn’t done it. Mrs May was a staunch aficionado of Europe. A Remainer to the core. She lacked the necessary moral fibre to free Britain from its European bondage. So she put on a fine act of virtue by advertising the fact that she was a Vicar’s daughter and that the wickedest things she had ever done in her life was to run through a field of corn. (Fully clothed, mind you, not naked!) The British public were taken in by her demure air of innocence and were naturally delighted to have as their prime minister a woman of such unparalleled virtue, whom many began to confuse in their dim-witted way with the saintly Mother Teresa of Calcutta. If they really wanted a deal, they could have voted for Mother Theresa’s dismal, defeatist withdrawal agreement. But they rejected it three times.
It is more than likely that Boris Johnson will agree to a souped-up version of Theresa May’s fake Brexit Withdrawal Agreement, thus betraying the 17.4 millions Leavers who voted for Brexit in June 2016. If so, Britain will remain a vassal state of Europe in perpetuity. If this is the final outcome after three years of dithering and duplicity—that Britain should get a FAKE BREXIT thrust upon it—democracy will indeed have been given the death blow in Britain........................