Who programmed the Brexit SatNav?

THE sense that time is running out to secure a successful Brexit is clear among people who fought on different sides of the referendum campaign.

A cross-party group of MPs has warned that the UK may be forced to stay in the EU customs union after 2020 because the government has failed to set out credible alternative plans.

This comes as concern mounts about the potential cost to businesses of possible arrangements, with it being suggested that the socalled “max fac” option could bring a penalty of up to £20bn.

The members of the Commons Brexit Committee are not the only people sounding the alarm bell.

Dominic Cummings, the pugnacious former Vote Leave director, warned that Brexit is heading for a “train wreck” and said “no real preparations” had been made to leave the EU.

He argues Theresa May – whom he wants out of Downing St – was wrong to trigger Article 50 and start the two-year countdown to Brexit day so soon after the referendum.

In a forthright article he said that “the state has made no preparations to leave and plans to make no preparations to leave even after leaving”.

Mr Cummings is famed for his undiplomatic interventions but the Commons Brexit Committee makes a similar case that extending the status quo may be the only “viable option”.

Stephen Crabb, the former Conservative Welsh Secretary who sits on the committee, warned that “we risk running up against the hard truth that we will be nowhere near ready to leave the customs union”.

Aberavon Labour MP Stephen Kinnock described the govern- ment’s handling of the negotiations as “truly astonishing”, saying that in October MPs “will be asked to vote on a withdrawal agreement with only a broad-brush outline of what our long-term future relationship with the EU will look like”.

People of different parties may agree with assessment that it is “deeply troubling that instead of negotiating with the EU the government is still negotiating with itself ”.

Brexit is too important to be decided by the internal politics of one political party. We need an exit deal that will best serve the parts of Britain that have the most to lose – and Wales’ vulnerability to any disruption of trade is well documented; this is about people staying in work and businesses staying in the black.

We need to decide where we want to go, and fast.