British Prime Minister Boris Johnson warned Brussels yesterday that he would be prepared to walk away from talks in the summer if the post-Brexit free trade deal is not to his liking.
The Brexit party’s Pete Durnell shared his view about whether Merkel’s desire to potentially hold crisis talks with Westminster suggests that a no-deal Brexit would be more damaging economically for the EU.
Sputnik: Does Angela Merkel’s desire to hold an emergency Brexit summit suggest that the EU would be more damaged by a no-deal Brexit than the UK?
Pete Durnell: In 2018 the UK actually operated a sixty-six billion overall trade deficit with the EU and their nations, so in other words, they sold us sixty-six billion more goods and services than we sold to them.
If we apply equal tariffs to both what we export to them, and what they export back to us, then basically, we win big overall, so I would say that under WTO rules, although some of our exporters to the EU will suffer, because they will have these tariffs to put on their goods and services, they could and should be easily compensated by our government.
They will have a huge windfall from all the tariffs that we put on what’s coming in to us, so they can just compensate the people who are losing out, and we still have an overall massive advantage.
Sputnik: Will either the UK or the EU make compromises for the sake of achieving a post-Brexit trade deal?
Pete Durnell: I think we’ve seen this week that our two positions are poles apart. On that basis, some serious compromises will be needed to bring those two poles together, and as I’ve just said; because of this huge difference in what we sell to them compared to what they sell to us, we are basically in a very strong negotiating position.
The UK finally seems to have a negotiating team which recognises this, so we should absolutely use this strength, prepare for no deal, have no fear of it, and basically the compromising should come from the EU.
Will it? I don’t think we’ll actually know right until the last minute, so it’s going to go to the wire, but I think they will compromise, but whether it will be enough for us to accept it; we’ll find out.
Sputnik: How would the EU cope with the loss of British contributions to its budget?
Pete Durnell: Ireland has been shamefully manipulated by the EU to try and prevent Brexit from happening, by exaggerating the border issue, and is now being asked to pay in more, but receive less back, in other words as the UK has done for many decades.
It’s kind of like a lovely thank you from the EU masters, thanks for being manipulated, so the Germans, the French and the Dutch are all going to have to stump up the UK’s missing billions, because the EU being the EU, has basically refused to reduce its budget upon Britain’s departure, which would be the logical thing to do.
Ultimately; the UK cash cow has now left the meadow, and I think the remaining cows so to speak, are going to have to make extra trips to the milking shed, and bluntly they don’t like it, and they won’t like it, so there will be interesting times ahead I think.