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Courtesy of the Telegraph.
Ever since the Brexit referendum, one enormous question has overshadowed all others. How can we completely leave the EU while still retaining access to our largest single export market, worth £230 billion a year, eight per cent of our GDP? For six months Theresa May assured us that we would remain “within” the market. But at Lancaster House in January 2017 she slammed the door on that by saying that she wanted us to leave the single market while somehow continuing to have “frictionless” access to it. All we have really heard since then is the sound of more doors slamming, on both sides. After 11 months of talking we still haven’t resolved two of the three problems the EU made a condition on negotiations moving on, including the Northern Irish border. The EU has made clear that, by our choosing to become “a third country”, border controls are inevitable. We have of necessity half-agreed a “transition period”, of a further 21 months up to December 2020, to put those border controls in place. But after October this year all negotiations will be at an end. We still haven’t begun to unravel all the complexities of how our major economic sectors can continue trading with the EU once the transition is over, from chemicals, pharmaceuticals and aviation to the motor industry. These alone are worth nearly £100 billion a year.
Mrs May still gives us not a clue of what she means by that “deep and special relationship” she hopes we might have. Yet all this and much more has now to be resolved by October. The EU has slammed the door on our retaining those “passporting rights” that helped to make London the financial centre of the EU. We haven’t begun to negotiate for those “Third Country Operator” certificates needed to allow our airliners to continue flying in EU airspace, or even how we replace the EU licences that allow us to drive in EU countries; let alone what happens when we drop out of the Common Agricultural and Fisheries Policies next year. Mrs May still gives us not a clue of what she means by that “deep and special relationship” she hopes we might have in the future. Yet all this and much more has now to be resolved by October, in just eight months, for two of which, July and August, Brussels will be on holiday.
It is hardly surprising that others are now beginning to realise that if only we had chosen to remain like Norway in the European Economic Area, most of these problems need never have arisen. But Mrs May has again slammed the door on that. So where does she think this will leave us? Or is she so lost in wishful thinking that she hasn’t actually got the faintest idea?