Nick Tyrone Nick Tyrone

What Peter Mandelson still doesn’t understand about Brexit

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On Tuesday evening at 11 pm, the chance for the UK to extend the Brexit transition with the EU expired. Britain and the EU must come to some sort of deal before the end of 2020 or what amounts to a no-deal Brexit will happen. What is interesting about this is how much a no-deal situation is still being underplayed by many in the government and other parts of the Westminster bubble. What is even more fascinating is the position of several key remainers on this point.

Lord Mandelson of Foy and Hartlepool has been doing media interviews this week, all as part of putting out his stall to become the UK candidate to be the next WTO director-general. The Labour peer says he’s been informally approached by the government to be our choice for the role. This is slightly odd in many respects but I suppose it is possible. Mandelson has the experience for the job and perhaps the government is thinking in terms of realpolitik; that Britain having one of its own countrymen in the top WTO job might be handy given the UK is now looking likely to be trading on WTO terms with the world in six months’ time. It may also hope that Mandelson might sway some Europeans because of his pro-EU history. If so, he may be an unpopular but not bad choice.

Not that Mandelson himself thinks that we’ll be trading on WTO terms, of course. He has stated this week that the UK and the EU will almost certainly come to a deal before the end of the year, when the transition period comes to a close. ‘I believe this government, which has not lost all sense of perspective, I think would realise that it does need a deal’, he said.

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Nick Tyrone
Written by
Nick Tyrone
Nick Tyrone is a former director of CentreForum, described as 'the closest thing the Liberal Democrats have had to a think tank'. He is author of several books including 'Politics is Murder'

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