EU’s farmers ‘will riot on streets’ if Brussels halts trade with Britain

‘We will look back and wonder what all the fuss was about’

EUROPEAN farmers would “riot on the streets” if Brussels stopped them trading with Britain in a “no-deal” Brexit, a senior Tory MP said yesterday.

Sir Bernard Jenkin accused the Government and parts of industry of spreading needless “gloom and alarm”, as he insisted cross-Channel trade would continue as now.

Britain is France’s sixth-biggest export destination by value of goods and French farmers are famed for their readiness to stage disruptive protests against moves they think will reduce their business.

On BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Sir Bernard asked: “What will happen to the quarter of Dutch poultry farmers who sell their goods to the UK, or the one fifth of Spanish tomatoes that come to the UK... what will happen to those producers if the EU insists on putting up all these barriers?

“They would be rioting in the streets at this perverse behaviour.”

World Trade Organisation terms, on which Britain would trade if it left without a deal with Brussels, were used successfully across the globe, including by other countries with the EU, he said.

The UK legislation to take Britain out of the bloc will transfer existing EU regulations into British law on Brexit day next year, so everything produced in the UK will meet EU standards.

“We can informally assure the EU that will continue for as long as is necessary and they do not need to put in religious-zealotry checking at the borders on everything leaving the UK,” Sir Bernard said.

“We have had all this before – it is the fear campaign. In the end people will not want to put their own producers out of business, they will not want to impoverish their own farmers and food producers.” The MP also rejected “absurd” claims that Britain will run short of medicines in a no-deal Brexit.

“We export more drugs to the EU than they export to us, so you would imagine they would want to maintain their supplies from us, not gum up the ports with slow, unnecessary and possibly illegal customs checks,” he said.

He stressed customs checks were becoming ever more streamlined and automated, contrary to “ludicrous and damaging” delay and cost claims being made by parts of industry and society.

“The Civil Service and Government are feeding the industry, and the industry is feeding the Government, with this diet of gloom, alarm and despondency. It’s unnecessary and we will look back and wonder what all the fuss was about, a bit like the Millennium bug,” he added.

Earlier, former Brexit Secretary David Davis insisted EU member states had more to lose than Britain from failure to reach a deal.

He said: “This has great scope for being a massive miscalculation on the part of the EU that could end up with no deal by accident.

“The UK Parliament does not want no-deal but it’s certainly not going to be pushed around by the European Parliament.” His comments came after International Trade Secretary Liam Fox put the chances of a no-deal Brexit at 60-40 because of EU “intransigence”.

But the Prime Minister’s official spokesman insisted: “We continue to believe that a deal is the most likely outcome, because reaching a good deal is not only in the interests of the UK, it is in the interests of the EU and its 27 members.

“But the Trade Secretary is right to say there is a risk of negotiations not succeeding and the Government has to prepare for all eventualities.”

CONSERVATIVE MP Sir Bernard Jenkin has said there could be “rioting on the streets” of Europe if farmers on the Continent are denied access to UK markets after Brexit. It’s a tit-for-tat game of competitive fear mongering following hard on the heels of Amazon boss Doug Gurr’s warning that there could be “civil unrest” in the UK within weeks of a no-deal Brexit.

That said, Sir Bernard has a point. Farmers in France, Italy, Spain and right across Europe will be furious with their governments if they are unable to sell their produce to the UK.

Yes, there will be a downside for Britain if we end up with a no-deal Brexit but the EU member states will suffer far more.

Let them think on that in Brussels.