In her Mansion House speech recently Theresa May said, "I want to be straight with people - because the reality is that we all need to face up to some hard facts" which many thought a bit ironic because she has refused to be straight with people or face any facts at all for the last eighteen months. But now Michel Barnier is using her own phrase. In a speech to the European parliament (HERE) Barnier said:
“One cannot have at the same time the status of a third country and demand at the same time the advantages of the [European] Union. It is time to face up to the hard facts,”
Here we are within a few days of the EU summit with the EU still demanding clarity (HERE).
And this comes a day or so after Jonathan Lis in The Guardian (HERE) offering a glimpse of these hard facts with a report about the impact of Brexit on Calais if we leave the single market and the customs union. Note this is not a hard Brexit but the government's preferred choice. Lis says:
"The manager of the port of Calais and the region’s president were not doom-mongering for their own amusement when they privately warned MEPs about the oncoming dangers. Calais’s boss, Jean-Marc Puissesseau, is entirely correct that compulsory tariff checks (as a result of leaving the customs union) and phytosanitary checks (as a result of leaving the single market) will simply be unavoidable legal realities if the government insists on putting us outside key economic instruments. His predictions of 30-mile tailbacks and rotting food – not to mention the businesses that will be crippled by the disruption to just-in-time manufacturing – must be treated with the utmost seriousness".
And note this:
"Outside the customs union, all goods must face rules-of-origin checks at either Dover or Calais to ensure that goods from the rest of the world pay the correct EU tariffs. This will be the case even if UK goods face no tariffs".
It is not only the Irish border we need to be worried about but Calais as well. How many more hard facts are needed before we start to face up to them?
