In order to avoid Brexit being totally lost, there is now a desperate attempt to make no deal appear like a slight bump in the road and perfectly acceptable. In the beginning it was a case of the EU giving us a good deal because we held all the cards and they needed us more than we need them. Next it was threatening to walk away since no deal would be more painful for them. Finally, we're supposed to be reassured that no deal is okay anyway won't really harm anyone and he does his best to convince himself in his column this week (see it HERE). He says:
"Unless Mrs May does scrape through next month, the only sure way of stopping “no deal” will be no Brexit.
"High time, therefore, to ask why “no deal” is dreadful enough to justify cancelling the largest vote for anything in British history. If Parliament is going to pit itself against the people, especially on an issue on which it sought their decision and promised to enact it, it needs to prove that “no deal” is the biggest threat to Britain since Hitler thought up Operation Sealion in 1940.
"But before going further, I would say that any Brexiteer should admit that “no deal” is what economists call “sub-optimal”. It would, in the short term, increase trade friction with the EU. It might delay the movement of goods into France (thus backing up lorries in Kent). Until at least the medium term, the EU’s Common External Tariff would bear heavily on our European exports of cars, clothing and agricultural products. A comprehensive free-trade agreement would be more comfortable".
"There is, however, no “cliff edge”. I put 'no deal' in quotation marks because there is a deal – the World Trade Organisation (WTO) terms, by which the EU and the UK are bound. WTO tariffs average a bit more than 4 per cent. Given that sterling has fallen by roughly 15 per cent since we voted Leave, our terms of trade, even with these tariffs, are better than before we voted. We are free to reduce our own tariffs to prevent rising costs to consumers. None of this need be disorderly. The same applies to customs declarations".
See? It was all scaremongering. No deal would be a bit less 'comfortable' as if the wealthy Mr Moore was talking about a pair of Oxford brogues that pinched a bit.
Crikey if a few poor people suffer, what's the problem? He adds helpfully:
"And if we decide that one group – car workers, say – has suffered disproportionately, we are free (as we are not in the EU) to take special measures to help".
Special measures being what? Building a state owned car factory? Or paying out Universal Credit? Moore does not seem to realise that WTO is a pale imitation of EU membership anyway and doesn't cover a host of areas like aviation or financial and other services at all. Also, it wouldn't just add friction in the short term - but permanently.
And Daniel Hannan, the thinking idiot's Brexiteer, is also starting to have doubts (HERE). He says Brexit might not happen and if it doesn't, democracy as we know it will be 'destroyed'. What? If the people get another vote and a majority think that Brexit is a disaster and vote to remain, democracy will have been killed - by more democracy? It sounds like a threat of Apocalypse Now.
Janet Daley in the same edition (HERE) writes on the same tired theme but blames remainers for deploying 'dark arts' in the corridors of Brussels. I assume she sees Lord Adonis sticking pins in a Brexit effigy outside Nigel Farage's office. That she could write this with a straight face after the leave campaign's mendacity and overspending is stunning.
It's all looks like toys being thrown out of the pram doesn't it? But the more nervous they become, the closer we are to putting an end to Brexit.
