EU Brexit negotiator: Everyone needs to plan for collapse of talks

Michel Barnier, the European Union’s chief Brexit negotiator, has said that it could not be excluded for the EU and UK to make it to the 29 March 2019 Brexit deadline without an agreement, despite the fact that it would be better if this were avoided.

Barnier, who last week gave the UK a two-week deadline before which point it was being expected to plot the way forward as regards the UK’s financial settlement for leaving the bloc, said that reaching no deal was not his preferred option.

 “But it’s a possibility,” he said in comments to France’s Journal du Dimanche. “Everyone needs to plan for it, member states and businesses alike. We too are making technical preparations for it. On 29 March 2019, the United Kingdom will become a third country.”

He said that it was vital for Britain to increase it offering if talks are to move on to discussing potential future trade deals.

Barnier’s remarks come as UK prime minister Theresa May is reportedly set to face a mutiny within her party, with many Tory MPs having expressed their dissatisfaction at proceedings under May.

EU diplomats have said that if the deadline is not met, trade talks would be delayed until March next year, which Barnier said would mean negotiations on a new treaty could only start in January.

Barnier warned that without a deal on future trade, the EU and Britain would revert to World Trade Organisation (WTO) terms and trading relations “like those we have with China”. This would have “consequences in multiple areas”, he said, from “the capacity of British planes to land in Europe to that of dogs and cats to cross the Channel”.

Letter from Michael Gove and Boris Johnson

Earlier on Sunday, it was a revealed that Foreign and Environment secretaries Boris Johnson and Michael Gove penned a letter to prime minister May, giving her instructions on how to run Brexit.

The letter urged May to ensure that members of her top team fall behind their Brexit plans by “clarifying their minds”, calling for them to “Internalise the logic”.

The leaked letter appears to make a thinly veiled attack on the chancellor, Philip Hammond, who backed remain and wants a softer Brexit, for lacking the “sufficient energy” in preparing to the UK’s future outside the bloc.

Moreover, it states that in “some parts of government” the preparations for Brexit were not proceeding with “anything like the sufficient energy”.