Category Archives: Op-eds

As the EU negotiations traverse this predictably tricky stage, the Usual Suspects appear on television blithely arguing that we should just walk away from the negotiations with the EU with no deal because it’ll all be fine, really.

Except anyone can see that that outcome is far from desirable.

The House of Lords European Union Committee has skewered any notion that “no deal” is anything other than a highly damaging option in a report published today. It also slams the Government for enshrining the date of withdrawal in the European Withdrawal Bill.

They also make the obvious point that it is not possible to reach a deal by the March 2019 deadline and so our membership of the EU should be extended to cover this.

We may not have much information from the Government in terms of the impact of Brexit on certain sectors in the economy, but we do have some pretty strong evidence in this report of what  a disaster a “no deal” scenario would be for the agri-food business, for the ports, for aviation, for the financial sector and it really isn’t pretty. Read through the evidence and wonder how anyone can actually go on telly and advocate it as an option.

The report’s conclusion is damning:

A complete ‘no deal’ outcome would be deeply damaging for the UK. It would bring UK-EU cooperation on matters vital to the national interest, such as counter-terrorism, police, justice and security matters, nuclear safeguards, data exchange and aviation, to a sudden halt. It would place the status of UK nationals in the EU, and EU nationals in the UK, in jeopardy, and would necessarily lead to the imposition of controls at the Irish land border.

The wider economic impact of an abrupt departure from the EU single market and customs union, and the adoption of WTO conditions for trade, would be felt across a range of sectors, including financial services, the agri-food sector, and aviation. It would have a particularly disruptive impact on cross-border supply chains. The short-term impact on trade in goods would also be grave: the UK’s ports would be overwhelmed by the requirement for customs and other checks. There is simply not enough time to provide the necessary capacity, IT systems, human resource and expertise to deal with such an outcome.

Vince Cable echoed the Report’s conclusions, saying that “no deal” would leave us “poorer, weaker and more isolated than at any time in modern history.”