UK getting ready for no deal on Brexit

LONDON — Michael Gove, the minister handling Brexit divorce issues for Britain, said on Sunday that his country is “increasingly well- prepared” for no deal on trade with the European Union even as businesses urged the two sides to find a compromise.

Gove said it is the EU that is not willing to intensify talks and avert a no- deal separation.

Such a finale to the United Kingdom’s five- year Brexit crisis would sow chaos through the delicate supply chains that stretch across Britain, the EU and beyond — just as the economic hit from the coronavirus pandemic worsens.

“It is not my preferred destination,” Gove said in an opinion article in the Sunday Times newspaper.

“But if the choice is between arrangements that tie our hands indefinitely, or where we can shape our own future, then that’s no choice at all. And leaving on Australian terms is an outcome for which we are increasingly well- prepared.”

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Friday that Britain should get ready for a deal with the European Union similar to the one Australia has with the bloc, “based on simple principles of global free trade.”

A so- called Australia deal means that the United Kingdom would trade on World Trade Organization terms. In this scenario, trade between the UK and the EU would take place with tariffs imposed under WTO rules, probably causing significant price rises.

Johnson’s critics say that an Australian- style deal is simply code for no deal at all with Britain’s largest export market.

More than 70 British business groups representing more than 7 million workers made a lastditch attempt on Sunday to persuade politicians to get back to the negotiating table this week and strike a Brexit deal.

The groups ranged from the Confederation of British Industry, TheCityUK and techUK to the National Farmers’ Union, the British Retail Consortium and the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders. Gove has previously said that while the British government wanted an agreement with Brussels, it was not going to be “held hostage”.