An extension to EU trade deal talks is a sensible move – but will anything change?

Editorial: Boris Johnson persists with the idea that Britain would be fine whatever happens but he would be wise to use the extra time to do a deal

cartoon-flow.jpg (Brian Adcock)

As Boris Johnson says in that breezy way of his: “Where’s there’s life there’s hope.”  He is right about that, and it may still be possible to avoid some of the worst aspects of Brexit. 

Yet as he has also stressed, the UK government and EU officials remain very far apart in key areas, and businesses and citizens would be well advised to make plans for no deal (so far as that is, in fact, possible).

Far from no deal being the disaster he must know it to be, the prime minister still persists with the message that Britain will do “very, very well” whatever happens. All that can be said about that is that it is taking his usual “optimism bias” to ridiculous extremes. 

The issues at the ports and likely food shortages will make a mockery of that, probably with or without a deal; job losses and inflation (from a collapse in sterling) will make such braggadocio seem the deeply cynical spin it plainly is.

Can a political leader have threatened such a colossal act of national economic self-harm with such jocularity? It is something of a low, even by Johnsonian standards. Yet things could become still worse. It is perfectly possible that these talks could meander on until the very end of the year, almost to the very moment when the transition period formally ends. 

However, the fact that talks are continuing is a sensible course of action, given the alternative provided by an abrupt end to discussions.

The 31 December deadline might be enshrined in law, but that does not necessarily make it inviolable. Because of the stakes, a belief that some imaginative solution still awaits just around the corner and the fact that neither side wants to be seen (blamed) for walking away from the talks, these mostly sterile discussions have a surprising amount of momentum of their own. 

Is this the Brexit anyone voted for in 2016? To be fair, yes, some certainly did. That was a time when the Leave campaign reassured the nation that a free trade agreement with the EU and future cordial relations were just some of the manifold benefits of Brexit as “global Britain” struck lucrative new trade deals with America and others. It now appears that Britain may be left isolated and with the worst of all worlds.

It can be argued that virtually no one beyond the hardcore of hard Brexiteers believed either that no deal was a good idea, or that it was remotely likely. Yet Mr Johnson now seems seized by the dogma of economic sovereignty and is clear that he sees no deal as still the most likely scenario.  Britain will “prosper mightily” under World Trade Organisation terms if it has to, according to the prime minister. 

Mr Johnson and the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, have said in a joint statement that it is “responsible at this point to go the extra mile”. Mr Johnson should take heed of his own words, or he may soon find himself judged harshly.