It seems that there is an implicit assumption that the current impasse in the talks will be overcome in the next few weeks, either by more concessions from the UK or more likely a sleight of hand that makes it appear we are not conceding more when we are. So, speculation is now beginning on the trade talks and the transition period.
As a backdrop, five of the largest business groups (HERE) the CBI, the EEF, the BCC, the IOD and the Federation of Small businesses are preparing a letter demanding a transition period is agreed quickly to avoid companies relocating in order to mitigate uncertainty. The IOD in August published a report about the transition (HERE) with legal advice that to enjoy EEA status we will first need to rejoin EFTA and this will take time. So far the government has not committed to anything as far as we know.
However, the IOD may have been underestimating the difficulties. Earlier this year an item appeared in InFacts (HERE) about the transition deal. The writer is a barrister and a fellow in law at Oxford, he says a trade agreement on the lines of CETA may take seven years and will end up in a treaty to be ratified by all member states and their legislatures. But, and this is important, any transition agreement is also likely to involve a treaty and this too must be approved unanimously by all the 30+ legislatures. Given where we are and assuming talks on both trade and transition start in January, we will have nine months or so to negotiate both.
This is quite impossible as far as I understand things. And business will not wait until the last quarter of 2018 or the beginning of 2019, hanging on the uncertain decision of various European parliaments to start thinking about what to do about a cliff edge that may be only weeks away. They will require legal certainty very quickly on what happens on March 30th 2019.
The only possible solution that I can see is to have an agreement that the UK will continue membership but be stripped of voting rights and with no MEPs. Nothing else seems remotely possible in the time available.
The problem for the government, and especially the hard Brexiteers like Johnson, Fox and Davis will be in selling this to the anti EU press and the various hard line lobby groups as well as the public. Macron said the other day that no one explained the consequences of Brexit to the British people (HERE) before the vote and I said this was a result of ignorance. But in the case of the Brexiteers their ignorance led them to deliberately play down the problems. Everything would be quick, easy and smooth. It is one thing to honestly say you don't know the consequences of something but quite another to dishonestly give assurances on something you have no knowledge of.
Rather than listen to experts, or read and understand the difficulties involved in Brexit so they could explain them properly, the Brexiteers and their cheerleaders in the tabloid press went for the populist solutions to "please the mob" as Kipling would have it. Now they will have to face the angry juggernaut they themselves created and try to control it.
Many commentators think the Brexit vote was more a result of disillusionment with our politicians on the part of voters rather disenchantment with the EU. If so, there will be even more of it afterwards.
