The grim reality behind bold talk of ‘holding all the cards’on Brexit

AFTER four long years of talks with the EU, the Brexit negotiations are finally coming to the end. As a member of Parliament’s Brexit Committee, I had a seat at the game - if usually somewhere at the back. It was a complicated grind. Always two steps forward, one step back, and with a couple of twirls sideways thrown in.

The Committee met the chief negotiators on both sides. The EU side would say, ‘ You’re leaving, so you lose the perks of membership. But we want a deal that will benefit us both.’ The UK side would be happy with no deal at all, thank you very much. Or they wanted the benefits of membership, but with no rules and no membership fees.

One Brexit Minister seemed to spend most of his time not negotiating. He wasn’t showing his cards was he, oh no! ‘These things are always settled at one minute to midnight on the last day,’ he’d say cheerily. ‘And if it’s bang-on midnight we’ll just stop the clock.’ So, each time our Committee met the EU Chief Negotiator, at some point he would say, ‘What we need to know from our friends in London is just - what do they want!’

With around 40 days to go, and having already stopped the clock several times, ‘what do they want’ is still a mystery to most of us. What we are getting however is not what we were promised by Prime Minister Johnson and his friends.

Wasn’t it going to be the easiest deal in the world? The UK held all the cards. They would come crawling with their prosecco and their BMWs. But the UK still has no deal with the EU. And no trade deal either with our saviour, the USA (where by now they have a new President).

15 ‘ continuity trade deals’, which replace ones the UK already had through EU membership, are still waiting to be settled. These 15 deals are worth £80 billion per annum to the UK. Wales’ share of just two of these deals, with Canada and Turkey, is worth £572 million to us every year.

Exporters and road hauliers are facing mountains of very expensive red tape, to be run on computer systems that have never been tried before.

Farmers, trying to sell their lamb and beef to the EU have to plan for huge tariff barriers.

Northern Ireland is finally having to face up to the reality of being part of the UK, whilst being both in and out of the EU. As a result, they face a border of sorts down the Irish Sea.

Powers over Welsh matters, returned from Brussels, are stopping in London, not coming home to our Senedd.

We got a special investment deal from the EU, ‘Convergence Funding’ or ‘Objective One Funding’. Now that money is to be thrown into the general pot for the entire UK, and there’s no news as to how it will be shared out.

I’m not trying to re-run the 2016 referendum. The UK has left the EU. That is the reality. But it is the way we are being taken out that is the problem.

We were told in 2016 that with Brexit the UK would take back control. Remember, the UK held all the cards. At the end of the game, it is clear that a lot of those cards were jokers.