Brexit: Barnier says deal will be difficult but still possible this week – live news
Posted by The Editor on October 15, 2019 4:28 am
Tags: Boris Johnson, Europe, European Union, Michel Barnier, Nicola Sturgeon, Politics, Scottish National party (SNP), Scottish politics, UK news
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Zac Goldsmith, the environment minister and an enthusiastic Brexiter (unlike Jeremy Hunt, who voted remain in 2016), took a different view when he was interviewed on Today this morning. He said he did not think a Brexit delay would be necessary. He said:
I don’t think an extension is necessary. If both sides wish to secure a deal, a deal can be secured. It’s a matter of political will. Where there’s a will there is a way, and that has never been more true than in the case of Brexit.
Government Minister @ZacGoldsmith insists a Brexit delay is not necessary: “Where there’s a will there’s a way… I don’t think it serves our interests as a country to be in a permanent state of division and paralysis” #r4today https://t.co/4hS30GOiCt pic.twitter.com/Oq5Xmc3WiI
Jeremy Hunt has said it will be “very difficult” to get a Brexit deal through without an extension. The former foreign secretary, who was Boris Johnson’s main rival in the Tory leadership contest in the summer, told the Today programme:
I think it’s going to be very difficult to get a deal, with all the legislation, through Parliament by October 31 which is why I didn’t want to offer that guarantee during the leadership campaign in the summer.
But I still hope it happens. And I still think, for the first time, if there is a deal and, frankly if we needed an extension of a few days I think people would just feel the end is in sight and that’s the important thing.
I think one of the mistakes that we made is to think that the difficulty in getting a deal is about malevolence from the EU, when actually there is a certain bureaucratic inertia in the way the EU operates.
Because it is, frankly, a nightmare to get 27, 28 countries to agree on anything. So I’ve always thought that there just won’t be a way to overcome that inertia unless Ireland decides they want a deal.