Deal or not, we’ve played a bad hand
AS the Brexit battle continues to rage with little compromise anywhere, I find it very difficult to understand the recent move by Dame Caroline Spelm no deal off the table, especially when it is not binding on Government.
Assuming Brussels is as obdurate as ever and the DUP will only support Mrs May providing that the back-stop agreement is deleted, if there is no meeting of minds, on March 30 we shall by default have to trade using WTO rules – something I have advocated all along.
I fully understand all the arguments that take the view that by so doing we shall have to accept cost increases across the board.
Such projected effects were, I assume, behind the two very experienced Midland MPs laying their amendment before Parliament.
However, there is a great deal of flexibility working with WTO rules and I feel many in Parliament do not appreciate that Brussels would very quickly wish all sorts of arrangements to be entered into where goods could flow tariff free between the UK and Europe, for that would be in their best interests.
It must be remembered that Euroland sends into the UK far more than we export to them, so their producers will also suffer.
Those affected will be pressurising Brussels to take swift action to sort out the problem which could be easily done with appropriate treaties.
Messrs Barnier, Juncker and Tusk made it very clear on day one that they would ensure that Britain would be worse off for leaving, such that no other member of the club would do anything else like it in the future.
If we had at the outset stated that we would be opting for
WTO rules, then Euroland would have been knocking very quickly on our door to negotiate a range of agreements which would have amounted to frictionless trade continuing as at present.
Instead of which Mrs May had to go to them as the applicant.
At the time of writing this piece, ‘no deal’ appears to be the likely outcome which will mean WTO whether we like it or not. Russell Luckock is chairman of Birmingham pressings firm
AE Harris