No-deal talk alarmist as arrangements needed

I imagine that we will get some kind of deal. We can’t have no deal, there needs to be arrangements in place for aviation for example. Aeroplanes can’t just stop flying on Brexit day.

So even if it is a piecemeal deal, there will need to be something there to manage the Northern Irish border and to regulate goods coming and going from the UK.

My feeling is that some of the things being said about a no-deal Brexit are alarmist.

The idea we would run out of food doesn’t seem all that realistic. The issues are more likely to be price rises and greater hassle in trading, rather than no food or medicine.

I don’t think another EU referendum is very likely. There are very significant barriers to that. One of them is that there just isn’t time before we leave. There would need to be a campaign period, we would need to decide on the question, and the terms of the vote.

The Prime Minister would need to go for it and the conditions under which she would do that aren’t clear.

There would need to be a bill through Parliament and we would need to look at voting regulation. All this would be very contentious, especially given the issues with the first vote.

If one of the criticisms of the first referendum was that people didn’t really know what they were voting for, you will have the same problems with a withdrawal deal.

The decision to remain in the EU is not one we can take any more. It would require Article 50 to be cancelled and that can’t be done unilaterally.

There probably would be a way but it wouldn’t be as simple as us saying, ‘Let’s forget about all that’.

So there are all sorts of practical barriers but also other problems with it. There is no sign of an official movement towards one and it would need considerable preparation. Leave voters would be extremely disgruntled and it would be a bit of a mess really.

In terms of the Scottish independence question, I can’t see much movement in the opinion polls despite quite a few factors that you would have thought would change things – overriding the Sewel Convention, the Continuity Bill in relation to powers coming back from the EU.

But while some people seem to have moved from No to Yes because of Brexit, others have gone from Yes to No. This churn has cancelled out any great change in the polls.

It is also very unclear whether the UK Government would agree to allow one.