Reader TTS

Nigel Farage today quashed rumours that his party would pull out of hundreds of seats, making clear that he would “contest every single seat in England, Scotland and Wales” unless Mr Johnson

caved in to his demands. Farage also did not rule out running as an MP himself and said he would make a further announcement about his candidacy over the next two or three days. As for the

Brexit Party’s demands, what Richard Tice amusingly called a “reasonable compromise offer”, they insist Mr Johnson must drop the Withdrawal Agreement that he just successfully renegotiated,

leave with no deal and then “take 6 months to negotiate a simple Free Trade Deal using Article 24 of WTO rules.” Compromise means giving them absolutely everything they want and accepting

all the risk of doing so. If this is how they think deal making works they’re not going to get far with Brexit. The proposal to form a ‘Leave Alliance’ will rightly be dismissed by Johnson.

Farage’s offer loosely translates as: leave the EU with no deal, take all the economic and political risk, deal with the consequences of the economic damage and take all the flak. Then,

having put the UK in weak position and burnt diplomatic bridges, go to the EU and beg for a free trade agreement. Some compromise! What we are witnessing here is the difference between a

Party of government, and a Party that is little more than a glorified pressure group. One is a child stomping its feet, and the other is the tired and incredulous grown up struggling to

articulate just how unreasonable their demands are. The Conservatives should defend their position with confidence. There is as solid consensus between economists and trade experts that a no

deal Brexit would hit Britain’s economy hard in the short term and diminish it permanently over the long term. The government’s own reports – published in September and March – lay bare the

damage it would cause and potential chaos that would ensue. The political and economic fallout would be destabilising for the government, catastrophic to the Tory Party’s reputation and a

gift to the Labour Party. That’s why Boris Johnson went all out to get a deal. As for using GATT Article 24 to facilitate a free trade agreement, this nonsense has been refuted by the

government itself, along with many trade experts who actually worked at the WTO. Farage and the Brexit Party are simply trying to pull the wool over the eyes of their supporters using

international trade rules which seem obscure and confusing to the layman. Article 24 is just a WTO rule that allows two countries to give each other preferential treatment in trade via the

signing of Free Trade Agreements. It does not dictate what’s in the agreement. It does not allow us to have a zero-tariff arrangement for ten years, as was previously argued. If we rejected

the Withdrawal Agreement and left the EU with no deal, Article 24 would not help us in any way. With no deal we would have to trade with the EU under basic WTO rules, meaning tariffs, border

controls and a huge amount of bureaucracy and expense. So, by saying we should negotiate a “simple free trade agreement under Article 24” the Brexit Party is revealing that its entire

Brexit plan rests on begging the EU, the world’s largest trading bloc, for a deal and doing so in a hostile diplomatic environment with the economy likely in recession. As cunning plans go,

I’d sooner ask Baldrick to solve Brexit. Oh, and Farage and Tice think a free trade agreement can be negotiated in six months? Six months? It is risible. Free Trade Agreements take years to

negotiate and ratify and the UK-EU relationship is complex. The current EU-Swiss talks started in 1994 and took 16 years to conclude. Preliminary talks for the EU-Mexico FTA started in 1995

and finished on 24 November 1999, with the agreement coming into force on 1 July 2000, taking nearly five years to complete. Work on CETA started in June 2007 and it has been applied

provisionally since 21st September 2017. We should expect a UK-EU agreement to take between 3-5 years, sulking about not being able to get it done sooner despite the complexities is not

grown up politics. There is nothing reasonable about the Brexit Party’s so called “compromise” proposal. They offered Boris Johnson an olive branch while trying to damage his credibility and

calling for his MPs to publicly disavow his Brexit policy. They are not allies, but enemies to be defeated. If Brexit is your priority as a voter in this election, it makes no sense voting

for the Brexit Party. The Conservative Party is the only Party that win the election and deliver Brexit. They are pledging to negotiate a Free Trade Agreement with the EU while in a

standstill transition period that bridges the gap between EU membership and the future relationship. By saying this somehow “isn’t Brexit” Farage and his Party just look silly. A Brexiteer

can either support a Party delivering Brexit or have a tantrum because an unwillingness to get real and accept compromises. Johnson’s leadership has already shifted the Conservatives to a

harder Brexit and a commitment to deliver it at all costs. Everything else is a distraction.,,