By Simon Jenkins
Now they are talking car crashes. From Brussels comes Project Fear Mk II, a “preparedness” guide for Europe if there is no deal on Brexit. It is Brussels-speak for a terrorism red alert. It covers such things as passports, air traffic control, financial transfers, military bases, data protection, medicines licensing and all the border clutter we have spent half a century removing. Unlike the remainers’ bloodcurdling Project Fear in 2016, this is not an economic fake forecast. It is frontline reality. It is Brexit as Grand Theft Auto.
Britain’s National Audit Office is joining in. This week it warned that, as of next March, Britons driving on the continent will need new driving permitsin the event of a no-deal Brexit. There must be gigantic laybys for traffic jams at Folkestone and staff for “huge bureaucratic delays”. Airbus and Rolls-Royce are already stockpiling spares against a new tariff regime. AstraZeneca is stockpiling medicines. Theresa May is touring the Irish border, like a field-marshal surveying trenches on the Somme.
Do we laugh or cry? I am still laughing, just. The car-crash option is favoured by some leave ideologues. They are technically right that in March a no-deal UK would “crash out” of the EU and revert to World Trade Organization rules. Such anarchy has disruptive appeal to those careless of other people’s jobs, while “taking back control of borders” would meet the leavers’ prime target of stricter immigration control. But the EU allows no new deals with third-party countries, under WTO rules or whatever, until the UK is out next year. In March, ports would swiftly clog up. The movement of people and tourism would plummet. It would be chaos, and even after that “new deals with the rest of the world” could not possibly compensate.
In reality, everyone knowledgeable about Brexit agrees on what will really happen if there is no deal in March. Nothing will change. Planes will keep flying. Ferries will keep loading. Channel Tunnel officials will wave vehicles through. Orders will go out to keep moving, and await further instructions. People at the coalface of the European economy cannot afford the posturing, vanity and idiocy of the Brexit parliament this past week. They have lives to live and mouths to feed. A closed border with the EU, not least in Ireland, would be like closing the Berlin Wall after it had reopened. There would be riots. That is why crashing out would not mean hard Brexit, but rather remain in all but name. When Brexit fantasy hits practical reality, reality will win.
For more read the full of article at The Guardian
