Yesterday on the Radio 4 Today Programme John Humphrys interviewed Peter Lilley on the latest situation over Brexit. Helpfully Brexit Central posted the 14minute and 3 second interview on you tube. The opening comments related to how Peter and a few of his chums had a private meeting with Theresa May at No 10 Downing Street. Whilst he was full of integrity and did not make any comments about the issues they all discussed, one of the big questions is how certain groups of people are entitled to private meetings with the Prime Minister at such a crucial time and other parts of society who were promised back in December 2016 that the Government would set out to listen to them, not only don’t get private meetings at No 10 Downing Street, they don’t even have any way of getting their views across apart from demonstrating. However Peter’s interview revealed some other useful points nevertheless. His main argument on the radio was to turn down the current Brexit proposal and instead go for the proposal made by Donald Tusk earlier this year when he offered us a Canada ++++ model of Brexit. Usefully Peter pointed out that the Government turned this down in part because it would cause conflict in Northern Ireland at the border with Eire, although of course the current proposal is causing conflict on the border with England, Wales and Scotland. Also usefully he pointed out that the Canada ++++ model would not lead to problems with airflights which the current proposal will cause. Another comment was that another reason why the Canada ++++ deal would not work in the mind of the Government because as a free trade deal, everyone and every company that would need to export or import to the EU would need to go through a process of paperwork to lodge customs declarations and declare the origins of their goods and whilst he did not mention it, the need for someone in the company to register as the persons responsible for such activities. Peter’s view is that “these fears that it will be hugely costly, cause disruption, interrupt Just in Time supply chains and undermine economic growth are at best exaggerated and at worst completely imaginary”.

He also suggested that renegotiating a new deal with the EU will at worst take 10 minutes and bearing in mind that our rules and regulations are already the same, that at worst it would take several months to confirm that we could work within the same rules and regulations.

The truth is that Peter Lilley is the one who is underestimating and under playing the impact of a free trade set of conditions, however his clarity over the problems is very helpful. He finally ended the interview after a BBC journalist had challenged several of the suggestions regarding how simple a free trade agreement would be by with a very high level of irony in his voice thanking John Humphrys for the cross checking that had gone on as part of the interview and then calling on BBC to do the same when they interview people who argue for Remaining in the EU. He claimed never to have heard such cross checking and whilst that was also an exaggeration, what is clear is that the Today programme has rarely brought in Remainers to talk about their ideas of what would happen if we did get a response from the public to remain, and what the future would look like. It does seem to me that we need more of an opportunity to hear such matters debated as clearly leaving with no deal has been explained by many people, leaving with the Canada ++++ deal has been explained, and leaving with the Chequers deal has been explained. No one to my knowledge has been interviewed to explain what we would do if we remained and how we would set about reforming the EU and rebuilding our relationships with the EU and nations beyond. It seems that we do need to hear from people with such ideas. In that sense I agree with Peter Lilley and Brexit Central!