LONDON, Nov 26 — Leading Brexiteer Michael Gove today defended the Conservatives’ pledge to finalise a UK-EU free trade deal by 2021 following criticism from the country’s former top envoy to the bloc.
Gove, a central campaigner in the 2016 referendum vote to leave the European Union, said striking an agreement next year was possible since it was in both sides’ interests.
His ruling Conservative Party has committed in its manifesto to take Britain out of the bloc by the latest deadline of January 31, kickstarting an 11-month transition period.
It has also promised to conclude a comprehensive trading agreement with the EU by the end of next year and not extend the transition phase.
But many trade experts and political analysts have warned concluding such a deal would typically take far longer and called the ambition unrealistic.
Others fear it could mean Britain ends the transition without an agreement in place and could suffer severe economic consequences.
“We’ve heard this scepticism before, it’s the sort of default position of many commentators,” Gove, who said during the referendum that people “have had enough of experts”, told BBC radio today.
“It’s pretty clear the sort of agreement that would work in the EU’s interests and the UK’s interests. It would be a free trade agreement with friendly co-operation,” he said.
Gove’s comments follow stinging criticism yesterday evening from Ivan Rogers, who was Britain’s permanent representative to the EU after the referendum until his resignation in 2017.
In a speech at the University of Glasgow, he said that promising Britain can complete a trade deal with the EU next year was “misleading”.
“The further ‘out’ of the European Union we choose to go, and therefore the further we want to go, the longer it will take to negotiate the necessary agreements,” he said.
“This is the first critical point which government ministers either repeatedly continue to get wrong or choose to mislead the British public about when talking in these weeks about ‘getting Brexit done’.”
His view was supported by former Conservative deputy prime minister Michael Heseltine, who called Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Brexit timetable “preposterous”.
Johnson could potentially submit his divorce deal for approval by parliament before Christmas, if he wins a majority.
But Heseltine said: “We are in for another year of uncertainty and a possibility of a no-deal exit at the end of it.” — AFP
