29 July 2017

Vince Cable: Brexit transition would be a ‘massive car crash in slow motion’

The leader of Britain’s Liberal Democrats said the prospect of a Norway-style deal with the EU post Brexit is “seriously inferior to the status quo” and denounced the idea of a two-year transition out of the bloc as a “massive car crash in slow motion” that would simply delay the economic pain.

Vince Cable, who leads the U.K.’s third biggest party by share of the vote, said it is crucial for Britain’s manufacturers that the U.K. remain in the customs union — and an agreement, similar to one struck by Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway, that allowed the U.K. to join the European Economic Area — has “nothing really to commend it.”

The newly installed Lib Dem party chief, who wants a second referendum on the outcome of Brexit negotiations, said EEA membership would not solve the political problem of migration, although he acknowledged it would be “better than crashing out [of the EU] with nothing.” EEA members are part of the EU’s single market but must accept freedom of movement from the bloc. And while they are subject to judgments by the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg, they do not have any say in making EU law.

[...] “It may be in that two years we don’t have massive disruption, which is very much to be welcomed, but it doesn’t explain what you do after that. All it means is that instead of having a massive car crash, we have a massive car crash in slow motion,” he said.

Cable said that while he was not arguing for a transition deal, there was “some sense” in using it to keep Britain in the EU.

“I think that one of the suspicions amongst the Brexiteers like [Foreign Secretary] Boris Johnson is that transition is simply a means of putting off Brexit until it never happens, I think actually there is some sense in that. If I were arguing for postponement I would want to keep open the possibility of keeping the EU relationship indefinitely … It is what I call the exit from Brexit.”

Cable warned it may become “increasingly clear” that technical problems around leaving the single market are “just so overwhelming and enormous that a growing number of people in the government and the business community and trade unions just say, ‘Well this is not worth the candle. Why are we doing it?'”

But he said that the opposition Labour Party must change its Brexit stance for there to be a parliamentary majority in favor of reversing course.

“A combination of negotiating bottlenecks and the change in the political alignments could get to us a point where the government has got no alternative but to try to drop the whole thing,” he said.

“That is where the second referendum comes in. I am not in favor of referendums. It is a terrible way to deal with it, but since this whole process started with a referendum it is the only way of finishing it. There would have to be some face-saving formula. But I don’t think we could exit from Brexit without a referendum,” he added.

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