Ross Clark Ross Clark

Jeremy Hunt’s foolish no-deal promise

As Jeremy Hunt has repeatedly claimed during the Conservative leadership campaign, to set a deadline of 31 October for leaving the EU is foolish. Why tie yourself to that date if a deal with EU negotiators seemed close to being sealed?

But if you have fallen for that argument, it seems no less puzzling why you would want to set a deadline of 30 September instead – as Hunt has done this morning. That is the date, he has announced, that he will decide whether a deal is achievable or not. If it is, he is prepared to carry on negotiating with the EU indefinitely. If it isn’t, then he will commit to a no-deal Brexit a month and a day later.

His announcement will, of course, be listened to eagerly in Brussels, where 30 September will have been underlined in red. That is the day, they tell themselves, that we will smother Jeremy Hunt with goodwill. Then, on 1 October, we can turn all nasty and stubborn again, because we can be sure that Hunt will have to carry on negotiating, as his deadline for leaving the EU without a deal has expired.

It would not have been a bad idea for Hunt to have set himself a private deadline for deciding whether or not a deal was possible. But in telling the world he has disarmed himself. And why has he chosen 30 September anyway – unless he was deliberately picking the date on which Neville Chamberlain returned from the Munich conference in 1938, waving his famous bit of paper?

One month’s notice for a no-deal Brexit is neither one thing nor the other.

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