PM should change his mind on Brexit

IN LITTLE more than six months time, Wales and the rest of Britain are due to leave the European single market and customs union.

When this happens, we are likely to suffer a sharp economic shock on top of the one we are already having to deal with as a result of the Covid-19 crisis.

Although the UK left the EU at the end of January, most people will barely have noticed.

We have been preoccupied so much with the pandemic, and our continued membership of the single market and the customs union during the transitional period has shielded us from the negative consequences of leaving them.

Both our First Minister Mark Drakeford, and his counterpart in Scotland Nicola Sturgeon, have urged Boris Johnson to reconsider his position, and in the light of the continuing Covid-19 crisis apply for an extension to the transitional period.

He has until the end of June to do so, but up until now has refused.

All the indications are that he won’t change his mind.

Mr Johnson, of course, has a lot invested in pursuing his current course regardless of any concerns. He was elected leader of his party last year on the clear understanding that he wouldn’t postpone Brexit. He had no alternative but to do so once, because he didn’t have a Parliamentary majority. But when he won a handsome majority in last December’s election, he had no further reason not to placate his die-hard supporters.

Yet true political leaders know when they have to be flexible, and any sensible Prime Minister would realise that expecting Britain to cope with the twin challenges of Covid-19 and a hard Brexit simultaneously was a bad and potentially disastrous option.

Next week will be the fourth anniversary of the referendum in which Leave defeated Remain by 52% to 48%. While there was a clear majority in favour of leaving the EU, there was no clarity about the kind of Brexit that would happen and very few foresaw what we are having to cope with now. We are facing the hardest kind of Brexit at a time when the pandemic has already shrunk the UK’s economy by one fifth.

The need to postpone our exit from the single market and the customs union is understood by the First Ministers of Wales and Scotland, but it appears Mr Johnson chooses not to listen.

We are heading towards economic rocks we must avoid.