Brexit: IoD right to advise preparing for worst as Juncker touts €60bn bill again

As the Government prepares to trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon treaty, the posturing on both sides suggests that a bad outcome may result

President of European Commission, Jean Claude Juncker (Getty Images)

The Institute of Directors looked clever this morning.

The business group had warned its members to prepare for the worst when it comes to Brexit, alongside a report outlining its preferred way forward. It was published shortly before European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker entered stage right to warn of the “very hefty bill” that will be imposed upon the British people at the end of two years of "tough negotiations". He put the cost at €60bn (£51bn), although it’s not the first time such a number has been bandied about.

Plenty of red meat for the tabloids there, and a chance for them to approach their favourite yahoos from the Conservative Party or UKIP for some asinine statement about Euro-baddies.

Oh yes, the IoD looked very clever with its warning.

It told the Government that its members are really rather hoping for something better. They don’t want to see the UK stepping over a cliff edge and relying on World Trade Organisation rules to trade with Europe, they’d quite like to see a willingness to entertain some sort of transitional arrangements, a deal over customs, perhaps for the Government to extend the negotiations (among other things).

A Brexiteer friend of mine (I still have a couple) keeps insisting that this is possible, that the worst will not happen. A deal will be done, they say, because it is in the interests of both sides. The sound and fury we hear at the moment is just so much grandstanding.

I’m afraid that I wouldn’t be so sure of that.

The Conservative Party has become the creature of ideologues and wreckers together with cynics seeking to buttress careers on their backs. Pragmatism appears to be in short supply.

Even the previously sensible seeming Philip Hammond took to dangling the prospect of Britain becoming a vast offshore tax haven (so what’s new?) in an interview with a German newspaper last month.

He suggested that the UK could abandon its European style social and regulatory model to get there if its trade were to be hit with heavy WTO style tariffs. The UK would, he warned, become something other than it is now. Something ugly.

With that sort of talk, perhaps he should join Mr Juncker and the rest of Britain’s Brexiteer leadership in boarding a boat bound for an island in the Atlantic somewhere, so some more sensible people could take over. I’d suggest somewhere like South Georgia, where the bracing conditions might cool their passions. The entire continent of Europe would benefit from that.

“I’m not very happy with this aggressive line,” Stephan Mayer, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's CDU party in the German Parliament told the BBC in response to Mr Juncker, while warning that the Brexit process will be still expensive for both sides, as well he might.

Oh for more grown ups like Mr Mayer. Are there any on the British side? Would someone kindly point one out to me?

You can hardly blame the lamentable Mr Juncker for making threats and issuing warnings about heavy bills when the no less lamentable leaders on the British side are doing the same thing.

Allie Renison, head of EU and trade policy, and author of the IoD’s report, said this: “While there are challenges arising from exiting the EU, they can be tackled if all sides approach Brexit in a constructive manner.”

But that’s exactly what is not happening at the moment and the voices of sanity, like that of Mr Mayer, are all too rare.

The IoD's report is not without its flaws. Calling for a second referendum to be ruled out, for starters. One ought to be held to ratify any deal, and give the public the chance to think again. The “will of the people” can change. But the Brexiteers know that. So it is quite hard to see that happening.

In the meantime, yes, businesses should prepare for the worst. They can hope for the best if they want, but in the current febrile climate it doesn’t appear that there are grounds for doing so.