SO IS IT A SELL-OUT — OR PLAIN COMMON SENSE?
Calm down, dears — plan may work
ON the face of it, Theresa May’s suggestion that Britain could extend its period of transition after leaving the EU looks like weakness. And it’s easy to see why ardent Brexiteers are infuriated, not least because it could leave us facing a bill for an extra £10billion. And this on top of a divorce bill currently standing at some £39billion!
But there is a difference between a sign of weakness and a recognition of reality. And Mrs May is nothing if not a realist. The central, unanswerable fact is that negotiations with the 27 member states have stalled over the Irish border.
And although some insist the issue can be solved through some miraculous but hitherto undiscovered technological fix, no such solution has presented itself.
Mrs May’s idea of an extended transition is an attempt to deal with that problem. In effect, she is offering to keep Britain inside the customs union and single market for another year – or as she puts it, a few months – so there is no border in Northern Ireland before a new arrangement is found.
Judging by some of her opponents’ more hysterical effusions, you might think she had offered to tear down Nelson’s Column and invited Jean-Claude Juncker to move into Buckingham Palace. In fact, she has merely suggested it might be worth abiding by EU rules for a little bit longer – if it buys us a better deal. Of course it’s not ideal. I don’t like the idea of paying an extra £10billion more than anybody else. But given that we have spent the last 45 years in the EU, a delay of a few months, even a year, should not strike even the most ardent Leaver as the end of the world.
Also, an extra £10billion seems a small price to pay to avoid crashing out without a deal. A no-deal would be a disaster. A drop of 2 per cent in our annual economic growth in the next two years – which would be an unrealistically good outcome – would cost us at least £22billion.
By comparison, even an additional 12 months under the EU’s umbrella, would hardly be economic Armageddon. We might not like it in principle, but in practice I suspect most of us would barely notice.
The fact that Mrs May is a pragmatist is why her MPs put her in Downing Street in the first place. It would be an unconscionable act of treachery and irresponsibility if they stabbed her in the back now.