We’ll have to fight for an EU deal

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.