What the commentators said

The Government “doesn’t seem to have the first clue” about what to do if food supplies are disrupted, said Jay Rayner in The Observer. Brexit minister Dominic Raab has confirmed that officials won’t be stockpiling food: they have no way of doing so. Instead, it will be up to the food industry to deal with the problem. These comments “have left the entire British food supply chain utterly baffled”. Half of the country’s food comes from abroad, and 30% from the EU. This is delivered just in time to be used; there simply isn’t the warehousing space to store it. The industry would be reassured if civil servants had at least raised the issue. But as Ian Wright of the Food and Drink Federation explains: “We haven’t yet had the conversation.”

“Ever since the UK triggered its withdrawal from the EU, the Brexiteers have complained that the Government is failing to prepare for no deal,” said George Eaton in the New Statesman. This, they say, has weakened Britain’s negotiating position. But now that No. 10 is making real preparations, the Brexiteers are furious: they say it makes no deal look “like Armageddon”. Yet the reason no deal looks bad, “is because it is bad”. It would be a major act of self-harm. It would damage Europe, but much less than it would damage the UK: the Government’s own estimates suggest that Britain would lose 8% of GDP over the next 15 years, while the EU would lose just 1.5%. This is why threatening no deal is not “a viable negotiating tactic”.

Yet May has already gone “as far as any British leader could go to accommodate Brussels”, said Daniel Hannan in The Sunday Telegraph. And Barnier seems determined to impose “Carthaginian terms”. So the PM should call his bluff: offering a choice of the Chequers plan, or a basic free-trade agreement (leaving it to the EU to decide whether it wishes to create disruption at the UK’S borders). The ball is in the EU’S court, said Timothy Garton Ash in The Guardian. It is becoming clear that Brussels is “being too rigid, too exacting, too punitive in its approach”. Is there no room at all for compromise? Countries with close UK links, such as Ireland, Poland and the Netherlands, should weigh in soon – or the results could be disastrous.