No wonder Brussels wants to talk trade

PLANES grounded... lorries backed up hundreds of miles at Channel ports... supermarkets stripped of camembert and Parma ham... countless Britons thrown out of work by voters’ lemming-like folly...

Every day, Remainers’ warnings become more hysterical, as they secretly yearn for Brexit to be the catastrophe that would prove them right.

So how frustrating for the doom-mongers that, in the real world, facts and figures – and hard-nosed business decisions – refuse to support their alarmism.

Take yesterday, when Unilever became the latest multi-national to row back on plans for leaving London after Brexit. Its decision comes as US drug giant Merck and German-Dutch technology company Qiagen unveil plans to create almost 2,000 jobs in Britain – hardly the act of firms expecting Armageddon.

Now even the ever-pessimistic OECD has been forced to upgrade its UK growth forecast for 2018, just a month after issuing its last one. Indeed, all major forecasters predict British growth (which has massively outstripped most of Europe for years) will continue uninterrupted.

At the same time, it becomes ever clearer how much our partners stand to lose if they block a trade deal. Witness the finding that 1.2million jobs will be lost on the continent – twice as many as in Britain, with Ireland hardest hit – while 30million European insurance policies will be void without a deal for the City. No wonder the EU is suddenly keen to press on with talks.

Indeed, the UK has a powerful negotiating hand. So how sickening that Labour’s Keir Starmer is seeking to undermine it, by demanding the Government reveal all its cards before trade talks begin.

If the Opposition’s Brexit spokesman cares a fig for Britain’s future, he will learn from Brussels’s own guidelines to its negotiators: ‘When entering into a game, no one starts by revealing his entire strategy.’

Meanwhile, Remainers should bear in mind another screamingly obvious truth. In the words of US bank Morgan Stanley, one prospect is ‘much more scary’ than Brexit for the UK economy: A hard-Left Government under Jeremy Corbyn.