Britain will crash out of the EU on 31 October unless Theresa May’s Brexit deal is ratified or a new prime minister calls a second referendum or general election this summer, the bloc’s leaders have concluded.

The Irish prime minister, Leo Varadkar, speaking at a summit in Brussels, said that there was now “enormous hostility” among the EU27’s heads of state and government to any further delay to Brexit.

He said that while Ireland had “endless patience” it had become the firm position of a number of EU governments that the indecision in London needed to come to an end.

An extension of the UK’s membership requires the unanimous support of the 27 member states. The European council president, Donald Tusk, had warned the UK not to waste the seven-month extension granted in April.

“There’s very much a strong view across the EU that there shouldn’t be any more extensions,” Varadkar said on Thursday. “While I have endless patience, some of my colleagues have lost patience, quite frankly, with the UK and there’s enormous hostility to any further extension.

“So I think an extension could really only happen if it were to facilitate something like a general election in the UK or perhaps even something like a second referendum if they decided to have one,” the Irish premier continued. “What won’t be entertained is an extension for further negotiations or further indicative votes. The time for that has long since passed.”

The comments appear to close off any chance of the significant renegotiation proposed during the Conservative leadership campaign by Jeremy Hunt and Michael Gove.

Talks with the EU, or attempts to find a majority in the Commons for a deal, would have to be concluded in a small window after the return of parliament from its summer break on 2 September.

Varadkar went on to dismiss claims from Boris Johnson, the clear frontrunner in the race to No 10 Downing Street, that the UK could ditch the Irish backstop and find a solution that would avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland during a “standstill” transition period after Brexit.

“I look forward to meeting him, look forward to hearing what he has to say,” Varadkar said of the new prime minister being chosen by the Conservative party. “But there are a number of things which we’ve very much agreed.

“First of all there will be European unity, that negotiations can only happen between the UK and the EU. We’re not going to allow negotiations to be moved to an inter-governmental level in any way.”

The EU was agreed that “the withdrawal agreement is not going to be reopened but we are willing to consider amendments to the joint political declaration, and if there is no withdrawal agreement then there is no transition period for the UK”.

“There’s no withdrawal agreement without a backstop and there’s no implementation period without a withdrawal agreement,” he added.

Varadkar’s comments echoed those of the Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, earlier in the day.

Rutte said an incoming prime minister needed to be flexible, and that he hoped that the rhetoric of the Tory leadership campaign would be dropped once a new leader was confronted with the reality of the UK’s position.

“I hope that campaign is done in poetry, and governing is in prose, as I think Churchill said once,” Rutte said. “That when they read all the briefs and get the details of where we are at the moment in the Brexit negotiations that the person in the prime ministership will realise that something has to be changed.”

Rutte added that there was no chance of a renegotiation and dismissed a time limit on the backstop.

“You would have a time limit that ends in four, five, six years time? If there is no other solution for the border issue, and I don’t think we will have anything in place in four or five or six years, purely technically. Given the present position of the British government it will be a hard border. Would we want that? I don’t think so. That would be the end of the Good Friday agreement.”

Asked about the possibility of a further extension of the UK’s membership past 31 October, when the country is currently set to leave with or without a deal, Rutte said he could see little point unless a new prime minister rethought Theresa May’s decision to leave the single market and customs union.

Q&A What does a no-deal or WTO-rules Brexit mean? Show If the UK leaves the EU without a deal it would by default, become a “third country”, with no overarching post-Brexit plan in place and no transition period. The UK would no longer be paying into the EU budget, nor would it hand over the £39bn divorce payment. The UK would drop out of countless arrangements, pacts and treaties, covering everything from tariffs to the movement of people, foodstuffs, other goods and data, to numerous specific deals on things such as aviation, and policing and security. Without an overall withdrawal agreement each element would need to be agreed. In the immediate aftermath, without a deal the UK would trade with the EU on the default terms of the World Trade Organization (WTO), including tariffs on agricultural goods. The UK government has already indicated that it will set low or no tariffs on goods coming into the country. This would lower the price of imports – making it harder for British manufacturers to compete with foreign goods. If the UK sets the tariffs to zero on goods coming in from the EU, under WTO “most favoured nation” rules it must also offer the same zero tariffs to other countries.

WTO rules only cover goods – they do not apply to financial services, a significant part of the UK’s economy. Trading under WTO rules will also require border checks, which could cause delays at ports, and a severe challenge to the peace process in Ireland without alternative arrangements in place to avoid a hard border.

Some no-deal supporters have claimed that the UK can use article XXIV of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (Gatt) to force the EU to accept a period of up to 10 years where there are no tariffs while a free trade agreement is negotiated. However, the UK cannot invoke article XXIV unilaterally – the EU would have to agree to it. In previous cases where the article has been used, the two sides had a deal in place, and it has never been used to replicate something of the scale and complexity of the EU and the UK’s trading relationship. The director general of the WTO, Roberto Azevêdo, has told Prospect magazine that “in simple factual terms in this scenario, you could expect to see the application of tariffs between the UK and EU where currently there are none”. Until some agreements are in place, a no-deal scenario will place extra overheads on UK businesses – eg the current government advice is that all drivers, including lorries and commercial vehicles, will require extra documentation to be able to drive in Europeif there is no deal. Those arguing for a “managed” no deal envisage that a range of smaller, sector-by-sector, bilateral agreements could be quickly put into place as mutual self-interest between the UK and EU to avoid introducing or to rapidly remove this kind of bureaucracy. Martin Belam

Rutte, who described himself as a “certified Anglophile”, said: “If nothing is happening? If it would mean after 31 October again going through the rounds and these traditional talks – ‘Can we make changes?’ ‘No we can’t, because you have to change your red lines,’ – [then] there is no point in having an extension.

“When a new prime minister comes in and asks for an extension we have to learn what his plan will be in terms of new elections, new referendum, making changes to the red lines the UK is currently holding … If there is no change on all those positions I cannot see why it makes any sense to negotiate longer.”



• This article was amended on 24 June 2019 because an earlier version referred to a nine-month EU extension granted in April to Britain. The duration was about seven months.

