Comment

Theresa May's two-year Brexit plan is hubristic, ignorant and laughable

Theresa May addresses a plenary session in the Congress Hall at the 47th Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, 19 January 2017
Theresa May addresses a plenary session in the Congress Hall at the 47th Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, 19 January 2017 Credit: LAURENT GILLIERON

I’m sorry, but despite the euphoric plaudits which greeted Theresa May’s Brexit speech on Tuesday, she could hardly have come up with a plan more utterly bizarre and potentially catastrophic. She showed no real sign of understanding the fearsome complexities of what a successful disentanglement from the EU would involve. The most trenchant verdict came from the German press, led by Der Spiegel, which said she is clearly living in the German equivalent of “cloud-cuckoo land”.

Of all the seven veils behind which she had long hidden her thinking on Brexit, the only one she had previously lifted was her repeated insistence that she wished us to continue trading “within” the EU single market. But she now emphatically rejected this, along with the only practical course which would have allowed us to do so. That “EEA/Efta option” could also have given us other advantages, including the unilateral right to impose selective control over immigration at least from within the EU.

Instead she imagines that, within two years, we can hammer out a one-off bilateral trade deal, comparable with that between the EU and Switzerland which took 17 years to negotiate. She seemed oblivious to how complicated and “resource intensive” such agreements are: so much so that the EU has already said it wants no more such deals with its neighbours. Also not irrelevant is its deal with South Korea, 18 years in the making, with 1,336 pages on trading arrangements; plus a further 64-page agreement, as is usual in such deals, requiring “political co-operation” on a range of further topics.

Even this is peanuts alongside the countless other issues needing to be resolved as we disengage ourselves from the entire system of government with which we have been enmeshed for 43 years. To think that the essence all this can be achieved in two years is laughable.

Again and again Mrs May seemed wholly unaware of what she will be walking into in two months’ time. She clearly hasn’t begun to grasp what is technically involved in the labyrinthine system of “customs co-operation”, which is what allows our goods what she called “frictionless” access to that market she wants us to leave.

She absurdly claimed that by leaving the EU we will no longer have to pay “vast contributions” into its budget. The very first demand she faces in Brussels will be how she intends to settle our outstanding debts, estimated at £60 billion, for all the ongoing financial commitments we have signed up to in the past.

Worst of all was her hubristic threat that, unless they give in to our demands on trade, we might just “walk away”. She is clearly unaware of what an unthinkable disaster this would land us in since, under the rules, our goods would immediately be shut out from what is still by far our largest export market. Even if she does get some kind of deal, it will require a hugely complex “secession treaty”, plus another treaty to amend the existing European treaties themselves; each requiring unanimous ratification by all the other 27 member states.

Having now stripped off all the rest of those seven veils, she will find herself in March, to borrow a phrase, going “naked into the conference chamber”. Her EU colleagues will be staring at her in disbelief. In two years’ time she may be praying that at least one country, say Slovenia, might save her, by vetoing the whole thing. The result of the shambles we would have made of “Brexit” might then be that, utterly humiliated, we remain in the European Union.

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