Sputnik: How long could Theresa May remain in power?
Alan Sked: I suspect she won’t remain in power for too much longer. There’s no real point in having her in power because she’s becoming rather embarrassing going around Europe trying to flog her chequers plan, which has no support at home and the EU flew off and dismissed it as mad and insane and unworkable. She still persists in believing that she might get a deal on the basis of this, but that looks absolutely impossible now, so she seems to have run out of luck.
She doesn’t seem to have any other plan and she’s so associated with the chequers plan, that I can’t see her lasting and I think that there’s going to be a bloodbath at the Tory Party conference in the poll booth, if she lasts that long. Boris is clearly starting a campaign to get rid of her.
Alan Sked: It’s not inevitable because there’s pressure to negotiate either a Canada-type free trade deal instead of the Chequers plan. There’s also some talk of Britain joining the EEA. A no deal does look more likely, because I don’t know if they can agree on anything else.
I don’t think it will be the end of the world, there are a lot of advantages to a no deal and I think that Rees-Mogg and others will point this out. There are economists who say that if we have no deal, we don’t have to give them 40 billion pounds, we save 10-15 billion pounds a year being given to Brussels, we can get rid of a lot of Brussel’s red tape, we can get rid of Brussel’s external tariffs and therefore bring in cheap food and cheap clothing, and of course we’re absolutely free right away to make our own policy decisions, without any reference to Brussels, so there are large advantages.
The views expressed in this article are those of the speaker, and do not necessarily reflect those of Sputnik.