Let’s stop being sentimental, let’s talk about Brexit like grown-ups

Brussels was never going to engage in a give-and-take: after all, this a negotiation not the end of a marriage

of the referendum, our team began with the presumption that we were entering a negotiation: that is to say, a process of give-and-take that, by definition, would involve rejecting the EU’s authority which, as a member state, we had previously accepted. This, surely, can be the only intelligible meaning of the word “leave”: to withdraw from membership of an organisation has to mean disengaging from its regulatory power.

The whole point of this negotiation must have been to try and reach agreement on those aspects of the previous arrangement we, and the other side, wished to retain, right? Admittedly there might have been some argy-bargy over this since what it was in our best interests to maintain might not have been in the other side’s interest and vice-versa.

But this idea – that we would argue about and then, hopefully, resolve – those points of convergence which we would preserve and those we would not was never accepted by the EU Commission. It was, in fact, explicitly rejected with maximum vehemence: it was the mortal sin of “cherry-picking”. The only options that the EU made available from the off were total acceptance of their rules and regulations – or nothing. So there was never going to be any genuine negotiation.

There was simply an ultimatum: you continue to accept our authority or you go jump. There should be no cause for surprise here.

Given the absolutely consistent Barnier formulation, it could have ended no other way. Either we remain in on the most powerless terms or we go out with no deal. Note: my conclusion is not a threat, it is just incontrovertible logic. Why are we still arguing about this? Indeed, why are some of the same people who promoted the original Leave vote, now having to open a renewed campaign of “Leave Means Leave”, as they announced in Friday’s Daily Telegraph? What else could “leave” mean? Those who refuse to accept the only possible conclusion – that the EU has effectively refused to enter negotiations – are not just defying the will of the people: they are de fying the common sense meaning of words.

Perhaps the people who are now arguing so strongly for a “no deal” exit knew that it was bound to end this way, either because they saw, at an early stage, the contradiction between our opening premise and that of the other side or simply because they understood the inexorable force of the European centralising project. (Indeed, I know for a fact that many of them regarded this outcome as inevitable.)

Hence, their fury at the UK government’s failure to prepare for this moment when, as virtually everybody says now, the prospect of our leaving without a deal is probably fifty-fifty.

The Whitehall team responsible for these things has been trying to counter those complaints for many months (but not in a very loud voice) with protestations that they have, in fact, been preparing guidance for a no-deal exit. And now, miraculously, they plan to let us all in on the details over the next week.

If this is true – and there really are splendidly thorough technical solutions to all the realistic contingencies that might arise which have been meticulously developed over the past months, we can only ask

at telegraph.co.uk/ opinion why they have been kept secret all this time. Why has the population been led to believe that no serious thought has gone into the increasingly likely (and always conceivable) possibility that we would leave without a deal? Because the Government did not want such an outcome even to be thinkable? Or because of sheer incompetence? Given the recent history, either of these interpretations is plausible. Then again, all of this technical guidance to myriad sectors of the economy might have been cobbled together in the last twenty minutes in order to give Michel Barnier and his gang a fright (or, as they say in Downing Street, “to show that we’re serious”).

And yet it continues: Jeremy Hunt, the man who replaced the indefatigably pro-Brexit Boris Johnson as foreign secretary is still running on the old formula.

Leaving with no deal would be “a mistake that we would regret for generations”, blah-blah. As if there was really a viable choice: as if there was something on offer from the EU other than “our way or the highway”. The language that Mr Hunt uses is the familiar one of a struggling marriage. We must avoid “a messy, ugly divorce” and instead do our best to maintain a close friendship (for the sake of the children?). This is sentimental claptrap.

We are not in a personal relationship with the EU Commission. Whether you think your allies or trading partners are adorable is neither here nor there. What is at stake is the hard business of diplomacy: international economic agreements, security arrangements and practical alliances for the benefit of as many of our peoples as possible. Let’s all talk like grown-ups.

‘Leaving with no deal would be a mistake that generations would forget...? Blah-blahblah. There is in fact no viable choice.’