UK’s Brexit ‘silliness’ jeopardises trade talks progress – Irish EU commissioner

The “silly behaviour” of Tory politicians means there will be no agreement on the nature of post-Brexit trading arrangements before the UK’s exit from the EU, Ireland’s European commissioner has said.

In a strongly-worded intervention, Phil Hogan stressed that Theresa May’s own red lines meant the only option available was a Canada-style trade deal and if her government remained fixed on the Chequers plan there can be no breakthrough on the future relationship by March next year.

Mr Hogan, Ireland’s representative on Jean-Claude Juncker’s European Commission, branded Brexiteers Boris Johnson, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Nigel Farage the “Three Stooges” and suggested they did not appreciate the significance of the Irish border issue.

In a speech at the Kennedy Summer School in New Ross, Ireland, Mr Hogan said: “More than two years after the referendum, the UK remains in a pickle.

“And by pickle, I mean that the UK is trapped in a recurring cycle of silly behaviour.”

Every time Mrs May has come up with a position to negotiate with Brussels “the factions in her own party will have none of it”, he said.

“Mr Johnson and Mr Rees-Mogg say, in effect, ‘Prime Minister, you must negotiate Brexit with us’.

“This is leading to absurdist politics.”

Mr Hogan said the Chequers plan’s approach to resolving the Irish border issue, by effectively keeping the whole UK in the single market for goods only, was unacceptable to the EU.

“We will not damage the EU’s great achievement of the internal market just to save the UK from the consequences of its own silliness,” he said.

Mr Hogan, the EU’s agriculture commissioner, said: “If the UK attitude is Chequers and only Chequers, there will be no agreement before March next year on the future trade relationship.

“We come back then to the withdrawal treaty pure and simple, part of which is the backstop arrangement for Ireland’s border.”

Both sides were determined to maintain an invisible border, he said, which was “essential for peace”, adding “don’t listen to the Three Stooges, they don’t know the first thing about it”.

He expressed hope that “administrative matters” relating to the operation of the border could be resolved as “bureaucrats do it all the time”.

Labour MP Virendra Sharma, a supporter of the anti-Brexit Best for Britain campaign, said: “Another day, another knife plunged into the heart of the Prime Minister’s Chequers proposals. When will this Government give up on their unpopular plan?

“No-one voted for a messy half-way house that neither takes us out of the EU completely, nor protects us from the economic disaster that is Brexit.”