We have just over a year to go until we are no longer within the EU, at least that is still the plan as we are due to leave officially on 29 March 2019.
But as it stands, I wonder whether we will actually be ready, willing and able, or will we be asking for an extension to the discussion time?
So far, the UK and EU negotiators have agreed on what the terms of the ‘divorce’ will look like, and have agreed that the negotiations can move to stage two. But Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, has been clear that while the first stage of negotiations has been tough, the next stage will be even tougher.
Divorce deal
The initial terms included agreements on problematic issues such as the rights of the more than 4m EU and UK citizens who have benefited from the freedom of movement rules to live in each others’ countries, the divorce bill, and the difficult question of the hard or soft border in Ireland.
Following this announcement back in December, there was a three-month period during which the prime minister is expected to get agreement from the cabinet on what a future for Britain outside Europe will look like. We are getting towards the end of the first month of this period, and so far, we have seen a reshuffle. Some ministers chose to resign their posts rather than stay on. Perhaps that is a sense of how difficult getting agreement within the Conservative Party on Brexit is actually going to be.
Of course, even if the Conservatives do finally agree on a way forward, it has to be rubber-stamped by the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). It has already shown its power to influence decisions in Westminster beyond its punching weight when the initial plans for the outline terms for the Irish border supported by Theresa May, were embarrassingly torpedoed after a phone call from Arlene Foster, the leader of the DUP.
Following the disastrous decision to hold a general election last year and loss of a majority, Mrs May is now reliant on the terms of any agreement within her own party being ratified by the DUP, otherwise there is a real risk that she will be defeated in the Commons. To say it is like herding cats is probably a bit of an understatement, given the passion with which all sides put their Brexit cases forward.
The last reading of the European Union (Withdrawal Bill) 2017-2019 as it is formally known, was in the House of Lords on 18 January. A debate on the Bill will take place in the Lords at the end of this month, which is the kind of speed we can expect for both Houses. But moving at the speed of molasses is pretty unhelpful to the wider world.
Unlike much of the legislation that passes through the Commons and the Lords, there is a sell by date on this, as a result of Mrs May’s insistence on unhelpfully putting an actual ‘date’ on the moment we leave the EU bloc. Almost as unhelpful as her ongoing insistence that “Brexit means Brexit”, given that no-one really knows what ‘Brexit’ specifically means. To repeat this to the UK population time after time reminds me of the way an exhausted parent might speak to a child who doesn’t want to do something without a justification. The response “because I said so” might be sufficient for a four-year-old when you just need them to get on with something, but the Commons, the Lords and the UK population in general deserves far more than that. Yet a wider and more in-depth explanation has not readily been forthcoming.
Uncertain future
So, for now we are left in limbo where businesses are unsure about the accurate shape of the UK’s future and how they will fit into it. Financial firms are edgy, making plans to move their headquarters out of London and into the EU in case the passporting rules change and they can no longer work the way they are used to. The uncertainty costs money, and at each stage removes some of the credibility that the UK has as a world leader in financial services terms. It will also cost jobs in the long run if our government does not get its act together and come up with something that looks like a plan rather than a series of platitudes.
There has been talk about whether the UK will go into recession. No one knows for sure, but there are some worrying signs. The collapse of Carillion could be a fire starter, especially as the number of businesses who have been hit by it is reported at around 30,000, and many of these are likely to go to the wall as they are owed such large amounts of money that they may never see.
The Association of British Insurers is expecting a bill of around £30m for trade credit insurers on this alone. The retail giant Tesco has also recently announced a restructure that could affect around 1,000 jobs.
When big businesses start to go under or restructure, that is a time to start looking more closely at what is going on in the wider economy. Only time will tell where it will lead, but the uncertainty surrounding businesses and Brexit will do little to help.
Alison Steed is a freelance journalist
