25/10/2016
A day after Hilary Benn
pronounces that quitting the EU could take so long we will need a transition plan, we have former "Foreign Office chief" Simon Fraser popping up out of nowhere to
declare that we need an interim deal for Brexit.
I almost feel that we could take a two-year break, writing absolutely nothing about Brexit yet, when we came back, we'd still be ahead of the game. Watching these people dragging their brains round to confronting the "bleedin' obvious" is worse than watching paint dry. It's painful to see them struggling so.
Anyway, this is the Rolls Royce mind of Sir Simon Fraser at work, as he acquaints the waiting world with the stunning observation that it is inevitable that negotiations over Britain's future political and economic relationship with the EU, including access to the single market and security and foreign policy considerations, would take longer than two years.
"This will inevitably mean some sort of interim relationship between leaving and establishing the long-term, permanent relationship", says Fraser, who then goes on to add: "I am not a catastrophist, but let us be clear: this is going to be an incredibly difficult, tough and complex negotiation".
But, it seems, there must be something in the water. To add to these two, we also have former attorney general Dominic Grieve who told Murnaghan on Sky News that he expects the negotiations over a new trade deal between the UK and the EU to take a "vast amount of time".
"I think the process of renegotiating our relationship with the EU is going to be of immense complexity, is going to take a vast amount of time", he adds, then telling us: "I don't share the view that a World Trade Organisation relationship will not cause massive economic problems for this country. You need something more than that".
As for all the other trade agreements which we're going to want to negotiate with the rest of the world, Grieve say: "I do acknowledge that if you're negotiating a trade agreement on your own then there are fewer factors from your end that you have to feed in. But the idea that these trade agreements are easy is I think a fantasy. They are exceptionally difficult, and of course what you don't then have is the clout of having a market of 500 million".
Grieve's comments, and in particular his observations on trade deals, are rather timely in view of the events relating to the EU-Canada agreement (CETA), which
are said to be on the brink of collapse.
But even without these latest events, CETA was but one example of how long modern trade agreements take to negotiate. Right from the beginning, more than three years ago when we were doing the initial research for Flexcit, therefore, it was obvious that two years was not going to be long enough to negotiate a bespoke agreement.
The interesting thing is that it is primarily the former "remainers" who are now seeing the light on the timing issue, with a large tranche of the "Brexiteers" still in a fantasy world of their own, unable to deal with the obvious.
But while the former remainers may be leaping ahead of the game â albeit at the speed of an exhausted snail â not any of the noise-makers have applied themselves to the nature of end game â the one for which we are supposed to be buying time with this "interim" or "intermediate" deal.
For those who were once remainers, though, this is perhaps unsurprising. Most likely, they would prefer the end game to be a return to the embrace of Mother Europe â if it hasn't already collapsed by the time we get round to applying to rejoin
The rest, though, really do need to start asking some serious questions. For instance, if industry and commerce are already squealing about the prospect of dropping out of the Single Market, why is it that anyone supposes that they would be any happier leaving an "interim" arrangement for a free trade agreement that offered a worse deal than the Single Market?
But then, if it has already taken years for most of the "Brexiteers"
not to come up with anything better, it is going to be difficult to put a timescale on them realising that we need something better than a dinosaur trade deal with the EU to keep us happy and wealthy.
What might actually be happening though is that the noise-makers in the "Brexiteer" camp are retreating from the issue altogether. Having made their points, they have very little new to offer and their nostrums so lack any credibility that they are only preaching to themselves.
The great problem will be that this leaves a huge gap, which is rapidly being filled by former remainers who increasingly look to be setting the agenda. How ironic it will be if these people, having lost the referendum, then define the Brexit settlement. And it will be even more ironic if we let them.
