Forget Theresa May's deal and leave on WTO
terms, a dozen ex-Conservative ministers urge MPs. So went a headline on today’s Telegraph.
And why not.
Any rational economist knows that leaving on WTO will not be a
disaster. Far from it. It is how the world trades. We will just be joining international trade free from EU control. Just as every rational
economist knows that leaving the EU will not the utopia land of milk and honey with unimaginable riches.
There is the small matter of the EU recognising that under WTO they will have to let us trade freely and unhindered with the EU has to be dealt with. But in reality there is no such thing as a cliff edge. Never has been.
In trade terms there will be a hiccup
while political leaders catch up with businesses who will find ways around any
barriers to trade that politicians either side of the Straights of Dover may
wish to erect. Businesses want to trade. Politicians want to control.
So it is perhaps no surprise that a group of pretty
serious sized farming operations who export hundreds of millions of pounds of
agricultural produce to and from the EU warn in a letter to Monday's Daily
Telegraph that Mrs May's deal could leave the UK “in limbo for many, many years
with damaging uncertainty”.
They say:
“We must have the confidence to be ready
to leave on WTO terms”. They
continue: "A managed WTO Brexit may
give rise to some short-term inconvenience and disruption, but the much greater
risks arise from being locked into a very bad deal. A managed WTO Brexit will end business and
political uncertainty more quickly than any other option.”
Know what, I’d trust their judgement more
than I would Mrs Mays. She has never run
or worked in a business in the productive sector. As anyone who owns their own business will
tell you, they are putting their house on the line every day. It’s risky running a business. You could lose everything just because
someone doesn’t pay you on time.
So when
it comes to calculation risk, I’m with the farmers.
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