Brexit: a deafening silence
This was supposed to be the “Brexit election”, said Martin Kettle in The Guardian. Yet seven weeks after Theresa May announced she was going to the polls in order to strengthen her hand in Europe, “all is silence” on the issue. Labour, deeply divided on Brexit, has chosen to campaign on domestic issues instead. And May, while insisting she is the only politician capable of handling the Brexit negotiations, has revealed next to nothing about her intentions. Too “cowardly” to tell voters the truth – that any decent trade deal with Europe would involve compromise, especially on freedom of movement – she just keeps insisting that “no deal is better than a bad deal”.
This “mantra” is almost as meaningless as “Brexit means Brexit”, said Jeremy Warner in The Daily Telegraph. Any post-brexit deal with Europe must be worse than the current one; otherwise there is no benefit for those countries remaining in the union. “Having cake and eating it has never been an option.” So the question is, “where on the spectrum” of inferior deals does it turn into a bad deal, and “therefore give way to no deal”? The very idea of “no deal” is “nonsensical”, said Martin Wolf in the FT. In the modern world, it is impossible for countries to trade with each other without first agreeing terms on issues such as regulatory standards and customs procedures. “Otherwise, the administrative burdens become impossibly cumbersome.” Even adopting WTO trade rules, as many Brexiters blithely propose, wouldn’t solve this problem, since WTO rules are chiefly concerned with tariffs rather than regulation.
The stakes could hardly be higher, said Will Hutton in The Observer. To take one example: a quarter of British exports to the EU (worth £3bn a month) go through Calais. At present they are waved through as “EU goods”. But if we crash out of the single market without a new trade deal, every consignment of British goods will have to be inspected to ensure it meets EU regulations. France has no incentive to invest heavily in expanding its customs service just to keep British exports flowing smoothly. “The M20 and M2 will become giant truck parks as drivers wait to be inspected.” The same is true the other way: over 10,000 trucks go in and out of Britain from the EU every day, transporting “vital food and goods”. If huge customs delays build up, “who will organise food rationing in our supermarkets”? Voters should be warned of the real consequences of “no deal”. Yet even as we choose who should lead this nation through “the most important negotiations since the War”, there is no real debate. “Instead, silence reigns.”