One minute Theresa May is threatening “no deal”. The next she’s scurrying to Brussels, desperately pleading for a deal.
Here are 10 reasons why crashing out would be bonkers.
1. Price hikes
If we fall back on WTO rules, tariffs will be slapped on EU imports: 45% on cheese, 37% on meat, 10% on clothing and footwear, 10% on cars. All in, it could cost families an extra £260 per year. Brexit inflation, caused by the plunge in the pound after the referendum, is already running at 3%. “No deal” would make a bad situation worse.
2. Customs chaos
Good luck with that “frictionless” border, prime minister. No deal means tailbacks at the border as the EU insists everything is checked. Lorries could be backed up all the way from Dover to the Dartford Crossing in Essex, says the FT. With trade gummed up, companies would have to fire people.
3. Planes grounded
We’d need a new deal fast or all flights between the EU and UK could be grounded. Airports and airlines are worried – even the chancellor has admitted it’s “theoretically conceivable”. This is because UK would lose access to Europe’s Open Skies agreement, which sets the rules for the aviation industry.
4. Citizens’ rights up in the air
Three million EU citizens in the UK and a million Brits on the continent would see their rights disappear overnight. Expect an exodus of nurses, doctors, fruit pickers, construction workers, restaurant staff, financiers, entrepreneurs… followed by staff shortages and lower taxes to spend on things like the NHS.
5. Fighting terrorism
The government wants to keep working with the EU to tackle cross-border terrorism and crime post Brexit. But without a deal, there won’t be any legal basis to do this.
6. Hard border in Ireland
Products such as Guinness criss-cross the Irish border several times during the manufacturing process. Each crossing would face delays and customs fees. And what of people who cross the border to work or communities that share hospitals? The peace process has been working well in Ireland over the past 20 years. All this would stoke tensions between nationalists and unionists.
7. Golden opportunity for SNP
If we crash out without a deal, Scotland will probably suffer a bad recession. The Scottish National Party will then find it easier to stir up the anger of the Scots and so destroy the 300-year union between England and Scotland.
8. Regulatory minefield
Medicines, chemicals, food standards, banking, nuclear energy, maritime safety, police cooperation… So much of our lives is regulated by a network of dedicated EU agencies. We’d drop out of all of them with no deal. Many industries will struggle to function until new agreements are in place.
9. Trade turmoil
The UK won’t just crash out of the EU’s single market. We’ll also lose the free trade agreements the EU has with 66 other countries from Canada and Mexico to Switzerland and South Korea. That would further clobber the economy.
10. Dangerous world
We work side by side with our EU partners to tackle the dangers in our neighbourhood: imposing sanctions against Russia for its occupation of Crimea, fighting people smugglers off the coast of Africa and so forth. The government wants to keep doing this. But if the EU is pursuing us through the courts for tens of billions of pounds it says we owe, how easy will that be?
All the more reason May’s dysfunctional government cannot be allowed to drive our country over a cliff.
This is a new version of an article that originally appeared in March.
The ordering of the bullet points was changed shortly after publication. Point 1 has also been amended to recognise that tariffs on EU goods would be a result of falling back on WTO rules.
