CAMPAIGN Brexit under the Tories
‘LIKE A CHOCOLATE ORANGE’
Find out more HERE Tory Brexit shambles could ‘fall away at a single tap’
If the Tories’ shambolic Brexit strategy was to be turned into a person it would be Boris Johnson.
Neither is taken seriously but their bluster and hot air are damaging none the less. The foreign secretary’s outburst in early July that EU leaders can “go whistle” if they expect the UK government to pay a Brexit divorce bill is a perfect example.
The snipe added nothing but bad feeling to the fraught and time-limited negotiations.
In fact, Brexit secretary David Davis has already agreed to the EU’s terms that the two-year negotiations cannot move onto any future trade deals without there first being an agreement on the divorce settlement.
Responding to Johnson’s jibe, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, said, “I am not hearing any whistling, just a clock ticking.”
Johnson’s comments on the divorce bill, which has been described by the Office for Budget Responsibility as nothing compared to the potential economic losses if Brexit is badly handled, is the mirror image of the Tory Brexit strategy.
Both are ill thought out and off the cuff. Prime Minister Theresa May and her government’s negotiating position has from the very beginning, been
belligerent and unsubstantial. Despite May’s attempt to win a hard Brexit mandate, the Tories lost their majority in the general election after voters rejected her “no deal is better than a bad deal” mantra and threats to turn the UK into a low-regulation low-tax nation on the shores of Europe.
Risks Even though the Tories are now being propped up by 10 Democratic Unionist Party MPs, May is still intent on forcing through a right-wing “hard Brexit” that risks Britain crashing out of the negotiations onto damaging World Trade Organisation tariffs.
The Prime Minister aims to exit the single market and customs union and strike a deal that provides “frictionless” trade.
But the government’s plans to stop the free movement of people with the intent of reducing immigration to the “tens of thousands”, leave the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice and strike sectoral free trade agreements, are EU red lines that rule out frictionless trade.
Warnings have been issued to the government thick and fast over their mishandling of Brexit.
In a rare intervention, the boss of the UK’s spending watchdog said in July Brexit was the biggest peacetime challenge the UK had faced, something
14 uniteWORKS Summer 2017
that was “only just beginning to click into people's awareness in government.”
National audit office head, Sir Amyas Morse, said the government’s plan was “vague” and likened it to a “chocolate orange” that could fall apart with a single tap.
Meanwhile industry groups, after continually warning about the severe economic dangers of a hard Brexit, are calling on the government to agree a transitional phase so Britain stays in the single market when the negotiations finish in March 2019, to prevent the country falling off an economic cliff edge.
Business leaders say there is simply not enough time to negotiate a comprehensive EU/UK trade deal before Brexit is enacted and that the uncertainty is already hitting investment and damaging the economy.
Unite assistant general secretary Tony Burke explained that the union had been working with employers from a range of sectors and that there is no difference of opinion on what needs to happen.
He said, “Nearly every major industry group has warned that the government’s aggressive brinkmanship is harmful to the UK economy and that crashing out of the EU with no deal will be a disaster. Industry’s position on this issue is the same as Unite’s because ultimately going over a
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