Commentator on Amazon's 'Civil Unrest' Warning: 'Project Fear in Full Flow'

Sputnik: Amazon’s UK boss has warned the Brexit secretary, Dominic Raab, that Britain would face “civil unrest” within weeks of a no-deal Brexit, adding the online retailer’s voice to a growing list of businesses voicing concerns. How significant are these concerns and are they valid?

Pete Durnell: I very much believe that project fear is still in full flow. These huge companies have a vested interest in us [Britain] staying in the EU because potentially we don’t have to collect that much tax off them as we should do, via the mechanisms that the EU runs. I absolutely think this is scaremongering again, and as it’s been bought up many times by Brexitiers, as a founding member of the WTO we actually have special dispensations to continue our current trading relations with the EU – that’s tariff-free essentially, until such time that current trade agreement is finished, which I basically think is just ongoing. The question that’s been set, we would be able to carry on for ten years. All this talk of cliff edges is scaremongering, the only way we’d have a cliff edge with the EU is if they set out to create one. As we have a huge trading deficit with them, it’s hard to see why they’d actually want to do that.

Sputnik: In the past week we've seen Theresa May been at the forefront of two separate efforts to topple the Prime Minister as leader of the conservative party. How will Europe perceive these attacks and what effect will this have on negotiations in Brussels?

Pete Durnell: It’s hard to speak on behalf of the EU, but essentially, with any negotiation, it’s going to down to the wire. You’re always going to have posturing and taking up positions which aren’t necessarily serious — I think we need to view a lot of what’s going on as this posturing. I believe very strongly that the department for exiting the EU, which is supposedly negotiating on our behalf, really has been just false front, in other words, they were made to look like they have the power to negotiate but really it’s been going on in backrooms with Oliver Robbins and he is desperate to keep us in civil service people. That’s where the real power lay and I think that’s a large reason why all these resignations have been coming in, because the people like Boris Johnson have had it put to them in black in white that things they’d been working on weren’t real and the real work has effectively been going on behind their backs.

I think the EU will fight its corner to the last, as it rightly should but we should be doing the same and not conceding 90% which is what the white paper form Chequers emerged. I would like to us take a much firmer approach and not go down this road, agreeing with the EU and Merkel before we start.

Sputnik: In the past month we've seen Brexit been diluted and change. In a recent YouGov poll more than 60% of those sampled thought Brexit was being negotiated inefficiently. Can the British people still trust the current UK government?

Pete Durnell: It kind of depends on which side of the fence you sit on. Personally, I didn’t trust Theresa May from the very start, I don’t see how you can have a real Brexit negotiated by someone who appeared not to believe in it and was effectively a remainer from the start of it. I think most of the polls are showing that trust in politicians has fallen to a historic low level and it’s not surprising.

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