The end of the Brexit illusion

The comments, which coincided with the resumption of Brexit talks in Brussels this week, marked one of the most pronounced admissions yet from a senior British government official about the prospect of a no-deal Brexit—a scenario British Prime Minister Theresa May famously said would be “better than a bad deal for Britain” in a 2017 speech. Though many within the government have insisted that an agreement with the EU is still within reach, virtually no one has admitted that failure could be seriously costly for both sides. Indeed, Hunt’s predecessor, Boris Johnson, said such a scenario would be “perfectly okay.”

Hunt instantly came under fire for his comments, and in an attempt to walk them back Friday tweeted that “Britain WOULD survive and prosper without a deal … but it would be a big mistake for Europe because of the inevitable impact on long term partnerships with [the] U.K. We will only sign up to [a] deal that respects referendum result.”

Hunt wasn’t wrong about no deal. Indeed, the potential consequences of failing to reach an agreement have been widely documented. In addition to both the legal and financial challenges the U.K. would face, there are also questions surrounding the impact it could have on the country’s ports, its borders, and the legal standing of its more than 3 million EU residents—just to name a few.

Brexit could cripple Britain’s ports

“What Jeremy Hunt was trying to allude to was the political damage that would ensue from … no deal,” Georgina Wright, a researcher with the European Program at Chatham House, told me. “Putting aside the economic damage and the bureaucratic and logistical nightmare of disruption to supply chains and all of that, there is also fundamentally a political damage that will be equally significant. It would be much harder for the U.K. and the EU to come back to the negotiating table, trust would be at an all-time low, and any lingering goodwill would be completely squandered.”

Hunt isn’t necessarily alone in these views. The British government has already begun to tone down expressions of its willingness to accept a no-deal Brexit, even going as far as to begin preparing papers outlining how disruptive it would be. Although the papers may be intended to demonstrate the U.K.’s preparedness for any outcome, they will also invariably highlight some of the most challenging issues that could come from failing to reach an agreement. As BuzzFeed News reports, the list is expected to cover more than 80 topics related to British life, from food labeling to pet travel.

“It’s about trying to step back from what was not very helpful language for negotiations and also just about trying to move toward getting a deal,” Simon Usherwood, the deputy director of U.K. in a Changing Europe, a London-based research institute, told me. “Now having a deal is very much the priority. No deal is not seriously discussed in the way that you saw in late 2016, early 2017. That’s really fallen to the sidelines of the debate.”