Given “no substantial progress” in the Brexit talks, especially on the Irish border, the EU is preparing for a no-deal Brexit. This would be bad for the other countries, but catastrophic for us.
The stark warning in the draft statement drawn up by the European Council ahead of next week’s summit calls on member states, businesses and others to “step up their work” preparing for a no-deal Brexit. It also makes clear that if we can’t agree a withdrawal agreement, there won’t be a transition period to cushion the blow of leaving the EU.
The EU is worried. So why isn’t our government? May and her ministers have spent months arguing over two different customs options, both of which EU leaders have written off as unworkable. All they have been able to agree is a “backstop” solution to the Irish border problem – which the EU has also roundly rejected.
Demand a vote on the Brexit deal
Click here to find out moreJust in case ministers weren’t clear on the EU’s position, the European Parliament’s Brexit chief Guy Verhofstadt repeated it again in front of MPs today. He rejected May’s preferred “customs partnership” plan outright and said he was “sceptical” about Brexiters’ favoured “Max Fac” scheme. He also stressed that May’s “backstop” was no such thing because it was temporary and did not include Northern Ireland’s regulatory alignment with the EU.
InFacts has repeatedly spelt out why a no-deal Brexit would be catastrophic. It risks miles-long tailbacks of lorries in Kent, airplanes grounded, hospitals running out of cancer treatments and other medicines.
The government knows this. A Whitehall report leaked to the Sunday Times calculated that even in the second-worst-case scenario we’d see “shortages of medicine, fuel and food within a fortnight” and the Port of Dover collapsing on “day one”.
MPs, voters, unions and business need to wake up to the risks we are facing. If we don’t have a deal, the public must be able to stop Brexit. Now we have a meaningful vote of sorts in the bag, all our effort needs to go into getting a People’s Vote at the end of the Brexit process.
Edited by Hugo Dixon
If we crash out and consequently suffer a huge crisis, the voters will know whom to blame – and that only the Liberal Democrat party campaigned against Brexit.
What a load of bollocks
Typical scaremonger talk.
The EU is a prison and we need to escape
Where is Corbyn??? How can he stand by and let May run roughshod over our country and our entire political system!! When will he wake up and do his job?
@ Burton – I’m beginning to think Corbyn would rather leave the responsibility for Brexit to May and the Tories. He knows it would cause him more grief with his mainly pro-Europe membership and MPs to actually take responsibility. I wouldn’t be surprised if he holds off seeking to defeat the Government until after March 2019. When the main damage will have been done.
With pro-Europe Tory MPs (excluding a few honourable exceptions) not having the balls to take on the Government, the only English party who have been consistently providing proper opposition are the Lib. Dems.