Sir Ivan Rogers appeared before the Treasury Select Committee this week. You can see the whole thing HERE. It was as usual, quite a sobering experience. Committee members, MPs all, demonstrated again how little they knew about the consequences of Brexit. The questioning was naive to say the least. I've seen some of these sessions before and it's clear that leaving the EU is monumentally complicated. So complicated in fact that MPs still don't understand it and even the experts sometimes struggle.
One is bound to conclude that the Brexiteers were making it all up during the campaign, offering warm words and reassurance about the process of leaving the EU on which they were almost totally ignorant. It was a stunning confidence trick.
Sir Ivan made several interesting observations. Firstly, in connection with the threat of walking away, he said normally you might want to walk away if the counterfactual (as he called it) was the status quo. In other words, if you decide to end negotiations things remain as they are now without any risk. But with Article 50 this is not the case. Walking away means leaping into a legal and commercial void with huge risks to almost everything and every one in the country.
This option is not available in reality since the consequences would literally be catastrophic - regardless of what John Redwood says - something the EU is well aware of.
Secondly, Sir Ivan told the committee that Mrs May triggered Article 50 before she understood how it worked. This is quite separate to being prepared, which she clearly wasn't. According to the former diplomat, she didn't get an agreement on the sequencing and this is why we are where we are now. This was raised on Question Time last night where someone argued she had no choice because the EU refused any pre-negotiation. This is true, but the argument was made that she shouldn't have invoked Article 50 unless she had an agreement on the sequencing. There would simply have been a stand off until agreement was reached.
Instead she sent the letter before we were properly ready and with no clear understanding of how the talks would be organised - all to our disadvantage. She did this because she was weak and because, fortunately for us remainers, Brexiteers in their lunatic determination to get out at all costs and as quickly as possible, were pressing her to get on with it. The result may be that either we won't leave at all or the deal will be so poor compared to what we have now, we will rejoin again very soon, poorer but wiser.
