I was quite taken with what David Davis said in the Express:
What should the Prime Minister do next?
I want the Prime Minister to publish a particular project. This was always in my mind as a reserve parachute, what we do if we don’t get a deal.
And basically what we do is take all of the deals that the European Union has struck with Canada, South Korea, South Africa, Switzerland, New Zealand – a whole series of them – and composite the best bits. From both sides, by the way, not just our side.
We produce a 40-page document but then get international lawyers to turn it into a treaty so it would go from 40 pages to hundreds and hundreds of pages, if not thousands.
So that’s on the shelf, come the autumn and if the current arrangements don’t work out, we say: “OK, we’ll retreat from that, we’re asking for a bit less, this is what we’re asking for, every single line of this has been given to somebody else in some treaty somewhere else in the world.”
So that’s what I would call Canada plus, plus, plus.
Because this is a thousand moving parts, it is impossible to tell you the individual way through, there will be half a dozen possibilities. People’s minds change in accordance with the pressure that’s put on them and the more high pressure the negotiation is, the more they’ll look around for other options.
Today, I wouldn’t expect the Government to be particularly welcoming of Canada plus, plus, plus – but I think, come the autumn, we’ll be in a different position.
Should we fear “no deal”?
It’s not the best outcome, although people get terribly frightened about it as if it’s the end of the world – it’s nothing like that.
You have the two extremes, you have the utopians and the dystopians. At one end you expect Mel Gibson to walk on stage, at the other it’s all fine, nothing will happen.
If we go to WTO it will be if the negotiations break down, so there will be a degree of hostility. You might see some quite deliberate problems but they won’t last for ever, they’re likely to last months rather than years. It could be weeks or months, who knows? But not very long is the answer.
Why do I say this? Well cast your mind back. What’s the indicator of the problem at Dover? It’s Operation Stack, lorries down the M20. The first thing that tells you is this is not a frictionless border – it gets problems for other reasons.
Sometimes the reasons have been quite long-lasting – 74 times in 20 years. So much for a frictionless border. The last big one was 2015 when there were 31 days of Operation Stack. Nobody liked it, no one would allow it to happen if you could avoid it but we managed to get past it. That’s the first thing to understand.
The people of Kent were quite properly in uproar but nevertheless, it didn’t bring the country to a halt.
Secondly, if this was done deliberately it would be a massive piece of self-harm because if you block the channel port one way, you block it both ways.
It’s a sort of continual circuit so from that point of view, it’s not likely to last very long because you are going to have French farmers in uproar.
The next thing to bear in mind, because people worry most about Dover, is that you can move up to 40 per cent of traffic to other ports. Zeebrugge, Antwerp, Rotterdam all want more trade and they are preparing for this already.
In this world of ours, people never seem to report Brexit good news. There was an NAO [National Audit Office] report recently that the customs software was all on target
I want the Prime Minister to publish a particular project. This was always in my mind as a reserve parachute, what we do if we don’t get a deal.
And basically what we do is take all of the deals that the European Union has struck with Canada, South Korea, South Africa, Switzerland, New Zealand – a whole series of them – and composite the best bits. From both sides, by the way, not just our side.
We produce a 40-page document but then get international lawyers to turn it into a treaty so it would go from 40 pages to hundreds and hundreds of pages, if not thousands.
So that’s on the shelf, come the autumn and if the current arrangements don’t work out, we say: “OK, we’ll retreat from that, we’re asking for a bit less, this is what we’re asking for, every single line of this has been given to somebody else in some treaty somewhere else in the world.”
So that’s what I would call Canada plus, plus, plus.
Because this is a thousand moving parts, it is impossible to tell you the individual way through, there will be half a dozen possibilities. People’s minds change in accordance with the pressure that’s put on them and the more high pressure the negotiation is, the more they’ll look around for other options.
Today, I wouldn’t expect the Government to be particularly welcoming of Canada plus, plus, plus – but I think, come the autumn, we’ll be in a different position.
Should we fear “no deal”?
It’s not the best outcome, although people get terribly frightened about it as if it’s the end of the world – it’s nothing like that.
You have the two extremes, you have the utopians and the dystopians. At one end you expect Mel Gibson to walk on stage, at the other it’s all fine, nothing will happen.
If we go to WTO it will be if the negotiations break down, so there will be a degree of hostility. You might see some quite deliberate problems but they won’t last for ever, they’re likely to last months rather than years. It could be weeks or months, who knows? But not very long is the answer.
Why do I say this? Well cast your mind back. What’s the indicator of the problem at Dover? It’s Operation Stack, lorries down the M20. The first thing that tells you is this is not a frictionless border – it gets problems for other reasons.
Sometimes the reasons have been quite long-lasting – 74 times in 20 years. So much for a frictionless border. The last big one was 2015 when there were 31 days of Operation Stack. Nobody liked it, no one would allow it to happen if you could avoid it but we managed to get past it. That’s the first thing to understand.
The people of Kent were quite properly in uproar but nevertheless, it didn’t bring the country to a halt.
Secondly, if this was done deliberately it would be a massive piece of self-harm because if you block the channel port one way, you block it both ways.
It’s a sort of continual circuit so from that point of view, it’s not likely to last very long because you are going to have French farmers in uproar.
The next thing to bear in mind, because people worry most about Dover, is that you can move up to 40 per cent of traffic to other ports. Zeebrugge, Antwerp, Rotterdam all want more trade and they are preparing for this already.
In this world of ours, people never seem to report Brexit good news. There was an NAO [National Audit Office] report recently that the customs software was all on target
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