Irish deputy PM Simon Coveney says EU is playing ‘wait and see’ for Britain to decide what it wants

Ireland’s deputy prime minister has warned it will be “impossible” for the UK to have its cake and eat it post-Brexit by having tariff-free trade with the EU alongside bilateral deals around the globe.

Simon Coveney, who was in London for talks with the foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, and the chancellor, Philip Hammond, on Wednesday, said the EU would “not facilitate” the situation.



He said the EU was doing a “wait and see” game, while Britain decided which version of Brexit it wanted.

Following a speech at Chatham House on Wednesday, Coveney warned the UK had “a tough choice” in the coming weeks, and it had to decide between staying in the single market and going solo with free trade deals elsewhere.

“There is a choice the British government will have to make and that is: where do the priorities for Britain lie?

Brexit must not endanger the Good Friday agreement | Simon Coveney Read more

“What is best for Britain here? Is it as close as possible a relationship with the single market or is it the ability to negotiate trade agreements on a bilateral basis all over the world? Which in my view will result in it being impossible to negotiate [an] as close as possible relationship with the single market and will allow for a barrier to free trade.

“That’s why I think ‘there is a choice’ is not a real choice. Those two things don’t go together, why would the European Union want [to] facilitate that to their disadvantage?” he said.

Coveney reportedly spent an hour and 15 minutes with Hammond, who supports a soft Brexit involving continued access to the single market.

Ireland’s tánaiste and foreign minister refused to be drawn on the talks but he told the audience that Ireland could play a “unique role” helping the EU to “understand the British mindset” in the coming months during Brexit negotiations. The EU would welcome a close and deep relationship with Britain, Coveney said, but not on the terms envisaged by Brexiters Johnson, Steve Baker and Jacob Rees-Mogg.

“If the UK were to request a very close relationship with the single market and customs union, I think the European Union would respond generously to that. But that isn’t the current position,” he said.

“The position is we’re leaving the single market, we’re leaving the customs union, we want to negotiate our own free trade agreements, and, of course, if that position is sustained, the European Union will respond accordingly and we’ll end up with a classic free trade agreement.”

Should the UK reverse its decision to leave the EU, he said: “I believe there would be an extraordinarily generous response from the rest of the European Union.” He added: “There would be no ‘I told you so’.”

Coveney also called for an Anglo-Irish council to be set up post-Brexit to preserve the vital bonds between the two countries. “As the UK departs the EU, we don’t want to lose the kind of cooperation that can be fostered from a simple conversation on a corridor or a cup of coffee on the margins of a meeting.

“We cannot be complacent. We have to work to maintain the ‘habit of cooperation’ that we have known over the past four decades, working side by side in Brussels and elsewhere,” said Coveney.

His proposal is for a bilateral council that will have a summit each year involving ministers, rather than civil servants, from both sides.