Boris Johnson’s threat of a no-deal Brexit will not break EU unity
It doesn’t matter what Boris Johnson or his new Vote Leave Cabinet make threats and the prospect in Brussels is that no-deal planning will be ramped up in an effort to threaten other European Countries be in no uncertainty: there isn’t time to control the damage of a rapid division from the world’s largest trading community this Halloween.
Unless a more extension is requested, or by 31 October article 50 is revoked, when the present extension of UK membership expires, a dramatic shock awaits the worldwide financial system, and we all stand to lose. The few who might grow are the wealthy bankers and hedge fund managers who have already bet on confusion.
It is fiction to speak of rewards for citizens or mini-deals to lessen the harm. Faced with a British government’s intention of ratcheting up talk of no agreement, other European governments have no alternative but to get ready for the worst too, but this is far from a wanted path.
Last week, the European parliament’s Brexit steering group met for discussing the new political order in London. We made it apparent that Brexit is a British verdict and that article 50 could be invalidated at any time, as the European court of justice has determined. If an extension is required, for instance for an election, the commission president-designate Ursula von der Leyen, has been clear that this would be taken into consideration.
But if Brexit does imply Brexit, we are determined that the conferred withdrawal contract, including the backstop, which safeguards the agreement of Good Friday, cannot be redundant as Johnson has requested. Though, all the changes are still probable to make the announcement on the relationship of the future more determined, to make sure that the exploitation of the Irish backstop is not essential.
Johnson will find the European Parliament an open and positive partner. I look onward in particular to relieving his concerns about the forthcoming accession of Turkey to the European Union, following the claims of the go away campaign he championed, as explaining the EU has no rules on the packaging of kippers in the United Kingdom.
