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Tuesday, May 14, 2019

How Brexit will tie up government for decades - and that is if we get a deal

The current chaos that is the UK Government could deteriorate further if a Brexit deal is ever agreed, according to the former national security adviser and head of Britain’s diplomatic service, Peter Ricketts.

According to the Guardian, Mr Ricketts believes that next stage of the Brexit negotiations are going to make the current mess look like a simple affair and will tie up the civil service for years:

A gathering of experts on Brexit and trade negotiations concluded that the bumpiest ride is yet to come, with Britain’s negotiating hand already weakened and EU unity to be tested in trade talks as member states jostle for position.

At an Institute for Government seminar, Lord Ricketts said the next phase of Brexit would be so complex and time consuming that it would make Theresa May’s current crisis look like “a relatively simple, straightforward affair”.

Ricketts is a former Downing Street national security adviser, former ambassador to France and a member of the House of Lords EU select committee, which has just published a report called Beyond Brexit: How to win friends and influence people.

He predicted negotiations are likely to go on for years and “encompass pretty much the entire of Whitehall”, with detailed negotiations expected in everything from trade and financial services to data transfer, transport, fisheries and nuclear and gas supply.

Tim Durrant, co-author of the IfG’s report Negotiating Brexit, preparing for talks on the UK’s future relationship with the EU, says the forthcoming negotiations will be of a scale and complexity unseen in the UK since the country joined the common market in the 1970s. And those negotiations will look like a walk in the park compared to what is to come, he said.

“Converting the 24 pages of the political declaration into thousands of pages of legally binding text will require detailed work from a huge number of departments and organisations across government,” the IfG said in its report.

At 585 pages, the withdrawal agreement is a tome, but if it is ratified and a free trade deal is to follow the final document is likely to be tens of thousands of pages long with agreement on the tiniest of details.

Stephen Adams, executive director at Global Counsel, says the departure from the EU is the most significant economic demerger since the second world war.

He also warned that any attempt in government to proscribe a type of Brexit, whether Norwayplus or a Canada-style deal, would be a gift to the EU if combined with a parliamentary ban on a no-deal exit.

It is bad enough at the moment with the whole government paralysed, important issues overlooked and key decisions postponed, if we have to put up this chaos for years to come then it could wreck the country. This needs to end now.
Comments:
Do people realise that the Withdrawal Agreement is only the START of negotiations?
Is the Civil Service going to be top heavy with people negotiating with 'The World' and then others negotiating with the EU
Will the World think we are talking from a position of strengh Will the same be said for the EU when we will be a lone voice?
Who will be our allies ?
It is a mess that can truly go on for a long time changing the country utterly
 
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