Theresa May just warned of a ‘no-deal Brexit’
FOLKESTONE, England - When it was built a quartercentury ago, the Eurotunnel was hailed as an engineering marvel. The game-changing undersea rail link between Britain and the European continent helped spark our global age of frictionless, “just-in-time” trade and manufacturing.
But the imminent departure of Britain from the European Union - just six months away threatens to undercut one of the most elaborate transit networks and business models on the planet, disrupting daily life for businesses and people alike.
The $20 trillion European economy is built on open borders - and the need for speed - for delivering fresh English lamb to butchers in Milan or German disc brakes to BMW in Oxford, not in days, but hours.
British negotiators remain resolute that a new free-trade accord can be hammered out with Europe by October, or if not then, by November, or December, or January - or before the stock and currency markets begin to freak out.
Yet, at the same time, the British government is also warning - and panicking - British consumers and companies that they should brace themselves for a cold-turkey withdrawal, a “no-deal Brexit” or “Brexit doomsday.”
“I believe we will get a good deal, we will bring that back from the EU negotiations, and put that to Parliament,” Prime Minister Theresa May said in an interview with the BBC that aired Monday. But she added that if the British Parliament rejects her proposals, then the alternative “would be not having a deal.”
May’s government once sang a song of “Global Britain,” a vision for a 21st-century trading dynamo, exploiting new markets in new lands.
But now Brexit secretary Dominic Raab is encouraging drug companies to stockpile extra medicine in case supplies cannot get onto the island after a no-deal Brexit.
Cadbury has started hoading chocolate for fear that ingredients will become difficult to obtain.
On Thursday, the French minister for European affairs warned that British trains and planes might not be allowed into France without a deal, while the governor of the Bank of England told the cabinet that a no-deal Brexit would wreak havoc rivaling the financial crisis of 2008.
In its latest assessment, the International Monetary Fund warned Monday that the British economy would incur “substantial costs” without a deal in place.
It has gotten so bad that British authorities have had to downplay rumors the army would be deployed to maintain civil order.
The prospect of a Brexit doomsday has generated a summer of scary newspaper headlines, think-tank analyses and government reports that envision British automobile and airplane manufacturing stalled, grocery store shelves emptied and massive traffic jams of trucks idling for miles, waiting to get through the Eurotunnel and British ports.
If London “crashes out” of Europe’s enormous single market and regulatory controls, Britain could find itself suddenly branded a “third country” under EU trade rules - subject to not only quotas and tariffs but also inspections at border control stations.
It’s the inspections that truly terrify many.
In the blink of an eye - on March 30, 2019 -- a crate of fresh Welsh oysters may no longer be whisked through the fast lanes at the Eurotunnel from Folkestone in south England to Calais on the French coast, and then quickly on their way to a bistro table in Paris.
Instead, the hapless shellfish could find themselves shipped to Dunkirk in France subject to “sanitary inspections,” a regime that often requires a government veterinarian to open the load, take a sniff, pull a sample and hand-carry it to the laboratory to see what bacteria grow under the microscope.
Without a deal, British meats and seafood may be viewed as no different than a containerload of frozen chicken from Malaysia, which can take 72 hours to pass through an EU. port.
Ralf Speth, the top executive of Britain’s largest car manufacturer, Jaguar Land Rover, warned last week that his factories might stop running and “tens of thousands” of jobs could be lost if she failed to reach a deal with Brussels, according to the Telegraph newspaper.
“Brexit is due to happen on the March 29 next year,” Speth told an automotive conference. “Currently, I do not even know if any of our manufacturing facilities in the UK will be able to function on March 30.”
“Bluntly,” he warned, “we will not be able to build cars if the motorway to and from Dover becomes a car park, where the vehicle carrying parts is stationary.”
Many Brexit fans call threats of a no-deal doomsday a bluff, an attempt to scare voters with exaggerated worst-case scenarios that won’t come to pass - a propaganda project to instill fear not hope.
But polls show a majority of voters believes a no-deal Brexit is more likely than not.
For more than four decades, Britain has been closely intertwined with the rules and regulations of the EU, a trading bloc of 28 countries. Goods crisscross on a daily basis - insulin from Denmark, olives from Greece, computer boards from France - whizzing around Europe as if it were a single country.
Today, a shipment of British strawberries travels through the Eurotunnel in 90 minutes, English motorway to French autoroute - a few minutes for the mostly Polish truck drivers to go through check-in, passport control, security at Folkestone, then 12 minutes to be loaded aboard the trains that shuttle the trucks through the tunnel at 90 mph in a trip that takes 35 minutes.
“There are no warehouses, no parking lots, no room for that. The truck is the rolling warehouse. There’s no stopping. Everything is based on motion,” said John Keefe, head of public affairs at Getlink, the new name for the Eurotunnel group. Big stumbling blocks remain between the EU and the United Kingdom, including how to avoid a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland or along the Irish Sea.
If Britain were to exit with no deal in place, it would “quite likely to be the worst political, economic, and social crisis for a generation maybe longer,” said Rob Ford, a professor of politics at University of Manchester.