I’ve been in
Scotland this past week – looking for a place to spend winters not least to put some of
my personal affairs in order before Britain separates from the Continent. Talk in
recent negotiations of a “transition period” had made many of us imagine that
time was still on our side but the past week seems to have seen a hardening of
positions and an increasingly cavalier (if not positive) attitude by British conservative parliamentarians to the idea
of “No Deal” with the EU.
This raises
the very real possibility that the UK will drop out of the EU on 29 March
next year. Clearly there are no contingency plans in place to allow such a
development – and a fairly immediate result will be total chaos.
Mutual
agreements have not been made with the European Aviation Body which manages
landing slots – nor with relevant customs and food authorities to ensure the
flow of containers at borders. For example, it appears that nothing less than
95% of vets who operate in food production in the UK are EU nationals (British
vets prefer to work with pets) and a lot of the EU nationals are leaving the
country
One of
the foremost commentators on the issue puts it like this -
No-deal is probably the most demented policy put forward by mainstream British politicians in the modern era. To see how it would work in practice, this piece looks at what would happen on day one. Doing this for the whole economy would take countless pages of Stephen-King-style horror, so it's stripped down to one topic: food. This is the story of how our system for importing and exporting food implodes almost instantly.
You may remember 'Brexit means Brexit' - that nursery rhyme from the bygone days of late 2016. It was false. But no-deal, on the other hand, really does mean no-deal. The withdrawal treaty comes as one package, so if Theresa May fails to secure it, everything falls down. There are no deals on anything.
March 30th 2019 becomes Year Zero. Overnight, British meat products cannot be imported into the EU. To bring these types of goods in, they have to come from a country with an approved national body whose facilities have been certified by the EU. But there has been no deal, so there's no approval.
There’s more
discussion of the issue at the
excellent Brexit Blog. And the EU Referendum blog gives a great daily commentary on the whole withdrawal process. Its author, Richard North, may have been one of the original Brexiteers but his analysis of government ineptitudes and shallow media reporting is essential reading......
I’ve
organised a nice flat but now have to contemplate making a trip in late March rather than April/May to ensure I’m able to enter Romania while I’m
still a European citizen…..I was planning to drive to Scotland (and back) but
have to reconsider that in the light of the nightmares which might face me as I
try to cross the various borders (although my number plate is Romanian!)
While I’ve
been here, I’ve been reading Tim Shipman’s Fall
Out – a year of political mayhem which tells the detailed story of political
events in the UK from the immediate aftermath of the June 23 2016 Referendum
until the end of December 2017 – including the General Election which was
suddenly called in April 2017. It is a frightening story of myopia and.
manoeuvring
Update;
in the absence of any national strategy to deal with the implications of a No-Deal scenario, local municipalities have been preparing their own.....with horrific results
a Brexit summer reading list Update;
in the absence of any national strategy to deal with the implications of a No-Deal scenario, local municipalities have been preparing their own.....with horrific results
October -
Why Britain is never prepared
British Ministers hadn't a clue about negotiations with the EU
