Trash talk and delays have tested companies to the limit

AT LAST, we’re getting somewhere. Even the most extremist Brexiteers are finally giving up on the idea that we can welch on our debts to the EU and still obtain decent deals on longterm trade.

Having held up talks to the point where we have only 16 months to agree on, prepare for, and implement our exit, one wonders if the Leave extremists are running a laboratory experiment on British businesses’ endurance capabilities.

Turn up the stress levels another notch, Professor Rees-Mogg. They’re still breathing.

It would have been far more intelligent for the Government to have gone to the EU straight after triggering Article 50, respectfully asked what they thought was a reasonable divorce bill (perhaps a net £50 billion or so), agreed a compromise, and got on with the more important issue of trade talks.

Instead, the Brexit radicals huffed that we wouldn’t pay a penny. They slagged off the enemy Europeans and brayed about how the EU’s population of 511 million need us more than we need them.

The result of all this trash talk? Eight months of the two-year negotiating period have been wasted and we’re closing in on a divorce bill of £40 million anyway, not far off what Brussels would have asked for in the first place. As a result of this delay, as Institute of Directors chief Stephen Martin will say at his annual dinner tonight, companies are running out of time to prepare; to reorganise supply chains, agree new contracts and work out their employment strategies.

So, it is ever more important that a transition period guaranteeing unchanged terms of cross-border trade must be agreed by next March at the latest.

If not, with only a year to go, companies will have no choice but to implement contingency plans. For some, that means relocating to the continent.

And, as with the European medicines and banking agencies, lost to Amsterdam and Paris, once gone, they won’t be back. FAREWELL, Dame Carolyn McCall. When you arrived seven years ago, easyJet punctuality was worse than Air Zimbabwe’s.

Passengers were treated more like self-loading freight than humans. The vision for the future was foggy.

You invested in extra crew and aircraft, offered scrum-free allocated seating, and flew to ever more premier league airports, rather than dusty fields in the middle of nowhere.

Customers benefited while rivals suffered. Brexit and terrorism have made for tougher times lately, but shareholders have enjoyed

£1.2 billion in dividends.

One classy dame, indeed. @ArmitageJim