Powerful case for postponing Brexit

IN exactly a year’s time from this week, the UK is due to leave the European Union. But if the original two-year negotiating period which began with the triggering of Article 50 seemed too long for many people, the lack of tangible progress has pointed up the complexity involved in removing ourselves from an organisation to which we have belonged for 45 years.

There was much rejoicing when the UK and the EU announced the terms of a transitional deal that was only possible because of huge concessions made by Theresa May in what were once red-line areas.

In truth, the EU is indulging the UK by allowing trade talks to go ahead before there has been a genuine resolution of the Irish border question.

As International Trade Secretary, the onus is on Liam Fox to negotiate the kind of advantageous trade deals he insists we will be able to make with a host of countries around the world.

Up until now, he has had an alibi for non-delivery of such deals: the delay in moving on to the next stage of Brexit negotations.

Now it is time for Mr Fox to step up and show what he is capable of.

But the problem he will have in making such deals – and the rest of us will have in judging them – is that they tend to take a very long time to negotiate.

In this case “very long” usually equates to years.

Brexit will be such a momentous event in British history that we deserve to have as much of the information about what it will entail as possible before we actually go through with it.

When Labour’s Shadow Brexit Secretary Sir Keir Starmer was in Cardiff recently, he said it would not be logistically possible to hold a further referendum on the final deal before we have relinquished our membership of the EU.

That is because by March 2019, when we are due to leave, the final Brexit deal will not have been negotiated: we will only know the terms of the transitional arrangements.

Even if there was agreement that another referendum should take place – a most unlikely scenario – that could only happen when we were already out of the EU and wanting to return on inferior terms.

Coupled with the untruths told by Leave campaigners and emerging disclosures about the manipulation of voters and the potential misspending of campaign money, there is an increasingly powerful case for postponing the Brexit date. The Western Mail newspaper is published by Media Wales a subsidiary company of Trinity Mirror PLC, which is a member of IPSO, the Independent Press Standards Organisation. The entire contents of The Western Mail are the copyright of Media Wales Ltd. It is an offence to copy any of its contents in any way without the company’s permission. If you require a licence to copy parts of it in any way or form, write to the Head of Finance at Six Park Street. The recycled paper content of UK newspapers in 2016 was 62.8%