EU has upper hand in Brexit, says Osborne

Former chancellor warns that Britain is not ready to leave the European Union by spring 2019

THE EU has the “upper hand” in Brexit negotiations, George Osborne has said, warning that the UK is not ready to leave the union in 2019.

The former chancellor, who backed Remain in the referendum, said the EU is “holding out for money” after Theresa May changed her mind and backed a transitional period, having previously claimed no deal would be better than a bad deal for the UK.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Mr Osborne, a harsh critic of Brexit and now the editor of the London Evening Standard, said it is a “ba- sic error” to claim that the EU relies on Britain more than the UK does on the 27 other member states.

“The truth is we both need each other, and in these negotiations in particular, Britain needs a transition deal,” he said.

His comments follow a series of tweets from Michel Barnier, the EU’S chief Brexit negotiator, in which he appeared to reject David Davis’s call to speed up negotiations.

The Brexit Secretary said a new trade relationship should be agreed at the same time as the exit plan but EU member states disagree, slowing down the pace of talks.

Mr Osborne said: “Britain is not ready to crash out of the EU in the spring of 2019. We don’t have the customs controls, the farm payment systems, the business arrangements that will allow that to happen, so we need to work with our European allies on that transition.”

He added: “The Government, having said previously that no deal was better than a bad deal, have changed their position this summer. Now they are in favour of a transition of unspecified length and are busy producing a series of papers to prove to the EU that they are serious about trying to do a deal and to bring the EU to the table.

“And the EU at the moment is holding out for money, holding out for rights of European citizens, because they know they’ve got the upper hand,” Mr Osborne said.

A swathe of position papers released in recent weeks, with another today and more later this week, are designed to prove the UK is serious and to get the negotiations back on track, he said.

Mr Osborne denied he was a “sore loser” after campaigning for the UK to remain in the EU during the referendum vote; defeat led David Cameron to stand aside and make way for Mrs May. Mr Osborne said that, having spent the best part of his career working for the good of the economy, he believed a bad deal for the UK would be the worst possible outcome.

But he warned that the country “is poorer” with the devaluation of the pound abroad, adding: “We’ve gone from being the fastest growing of the G7 to one of the slowest growing.”

He also called on Mrs May to do more for voters in the north of England by committing to new transport projects, warning the Conservatives must appeal to voters across the country and not just in London.

Mr Osborne is no stranger to criticising Mrs May and her plans for Brexit. As editor of the Evening Standard, he has been accused of using the newspaper to put pressure on his former colleagues about leaving the EU.