Pro-deal MPs talk, with sincerity, about ‘healing’ that can now begin. We simply have to get real about this. The next year won’t see any ‘healing’. The last 3 years were the warm-up act where the big decisions were deferred. In next 14 months they will finally have to be made.
These are huge decisions about the economic future of our country. How closely will we harmonise regulations? That will have massive knock-on effects for our major industries, such as cars, agriculture, pharmaceuticals. Big businesses could go under.
What about the bigger decisions still? How can we ensure supply chains and frictionless border trade if we leave the single market and customs union? How can we avoid no-deal-type disruption if French still need to check our lorries as a third country? Nobody has yet answered.
All of the border infrastructure and new checks we have managed to avoid on Irish border will become reality at the French one. This won’t reinflame a sectarian conflict but could clobber our economy and daily trade. Barely a word has been mentioned about it.
This won’t just be one of most complex trade deals ever negotiated. It will be one of most complex trade deals with highest stakes and tightest deadline. Why? Because we’ll be out of EU and default to no-deal if it all goes wrong. 14 months, and it’s over. Canada deal took 7 yrs.
This culture war is going to get worse before it gets better because we won’t be talking about the divorce anymore, but wrangling over our country’s future against a rapidly approaching hard deadline. Forgive me if I think we might have to wait a little longer before we ‘heal’.
