Sunday Mirror (Northern Ireland)
BREXIT TALKS WILL BECOME GREEK DRAMA
May must change strategy says man who tackled EU
THERESA May has miscalculated her Brexit strategy, says the former Greek finance minister who handled his country’s EU negotiations.
Yanis Varoufakis, writing exclusively in the Sunday Mirror, says the PM’s threat of a “hard Brexit” will not make Britain’s departure any easier.
The politician, famed for his leather-jacketed motorcycling image, predicts that “nothing good” will come of the two-year negotiations unless Mrs May changes her position.
Mr Varoufakis said: “By making a hard Brexit the default of the negotiating process, Mrs May has secured its credibility. However, a credible threat can still produce an undesirable outcome.”
Mr Varoufakis, who cofounded the reform group Democracy in Europe 2025 (DiEM25) expects a frustrating two years for UK negotiators.
He saw the methods of EU powerbrokers while securing a Greek bailout. And he says the UK negotiating team will get a similarly rough ride.
Mr Varoufakis recommends going for a deal like Norway’s – non-membership but with access to the single market. Talks begin on April 29.
VIEW Brexit through rose-tinted spectacles and we’ll be out of the EU on schedule by March 2019.
And in two short years we’ll be on the road to a golden age of global trade filling our pockets with riches beyond our wildest dreams. Dream on.
Brexit negotiations will be fraught and testy, and take more than two years to complete.
The deal at the end of it cannot possibly be everything we hope for – that’s if we get a deal at all.
That doesn’t mean Brexit will be a disaster. It means it will come at a cost, and those who voted for it will only know then whether it was worth the price.
We are not being remoaners, but realists. We now have a glimpse of the complexities of Brexit, and it will become more complicated before we are done.
Today Yanis Varoufakis, the former Greek finance minister bruised by his own bailout negotiations with the EU, explains why ours will not be easy.
He says the EU is so riven with self-interest it makes no difference whether we present reasonable proposals or break into a chorus of the Swedish national anthem.
This is a chess game in which Britain must not end up as the sacrificial pawn. That means Theresa May being more honest and realistic about what is involved than she has been so far.
The PM accepts that controlling migration means leaving the single market. But we must accept we will still need large numbers of EU migrants, not least the 55,000 who keep the NHS going.
The PM says no deal is better than a bad deal. No deal means tariffs of 10 per cent on our cars sold in the EU, 15 per cent on groceries and 36 per cent on dairy products.
Prices for those goods would go up by a similar amount in Britain if we had to introduce reciprocal import barriers. No deal is no option.
This chess board has 28 pieces, each representing an EU member state. And it cannot be guaranteed that all will behave reasonably. Spain is already on manoeuvres over Gibraltar.
Whatever the Brexiteers say, we are not going to be able to have our cake and eat it.
But we must be careful not to allow our cake to be thrown in the bin before we have even taken a bite.