Is no-deal Brexit really an option for Britain?

No-deal Brexit is more an abstract concept than a policy option/proposal. As concept, it is like Britain’s Trident nuclear missiles – a weapon so terrible that using it would invite retaliation and, thus, vast damage to both sides in any conflict.

If the threat of such use is credible, that very fact makes the actual use of it unnecessary – the deterrent effect.

As Boris Johnson explains it: “No one sensible would aim exclusively for a no-deal outcome. No one responsible would take no deal off the table.”

The idea is that a British prime minister tells Europe that either they bend and amend the withdrawal agreement or risk the gigantic disruption to EU ports, exporters, travel, trade and general commerce that would ensue, at vast cost to key industrial sectors. German cars, French wines, the Spanish tourist industry and so on. It does not matter, in this argument, that the UK would be hit harder than the EU – the important point is that the EU would be distracted and damaged by such an unthinkable outcome.

The most painful point of application is the Irish border; for a no-deal Brexit would mean a hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland. If the UK simply refused to implement border controls, blithely asserting they were unnecessary, and the Irish did not set up customs controls, for political reasons, then who would Brussels send to patrol this border and protect the integrity of the EU single market? Who would stop Donald Trump’s notorious chlorinated chickens, banned under EU law, flying into Belfast then travelling south unimpeded to Ireland and rest of the EU, as far as Tallinn or Sofia? The Bundeswehr?

At the very least the EU would be persuaded to re-open talks, the logic runs. Against that, of course, are the massed ranks of the opposition parties and Tory rebel MPs ready and willing to rule out a no deal whatever the new PM might say – and so the British would go around that particular circle again.

What most so-called No Dealers, classically Nigel Farage and Dominic Raab, actually want is a deal – a free-trade agreement along the lines of the one the EU settled with Canada. That, however, would be limited to goods, and has little to say about services and the City, which make up the rest of the bulk of the UK’s trade with Europe.

If such a deal proves impossible, then, they say, they are willing to countenance a no-deal Brexit. This would mean trading with the EU on World Trade Organisation terms – with tariffs and other restrictions on imports. These would hit the British agriculture, automotive and aerospace sectors particularly badly, might create shortages of medicines and some other essentials, layoffs, and reduce GDP. Air, sea and other travel would also suffer disruption.

It is possible that this disorderly Brexit can be avoided, under WTO rules, if an “Article 24” arrangement is concluded. This refers to the original Article XXIV of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the forerunner of the WTO. It allows for tariff-free access for both sides for up to 10 years – provided that both sides are engaged in a negotiating a free trade agreement. If relations really collapse, then the clause would not apply.

Britain could unilaterally renounce all its trade tariffs and controls on imports from Europe, but only under WTO rules, if it did so for every WTO state – ie virtually every nation in the world. This would in any case mainly apply to goods, not services, which makes up about 80 per cent of the UK economy.

No deal would not be a “clean Brexit” or “getting on with” Brexit and ending the agony on 31 October in any event. There would still be wrangling, in Westminster and Brussels, about the £39bn “divorce” bill; the rights of EU and UK citizens in the UK/EU; the Irish border; the status of Gibraltar; security; data; the City and banks; state aid; workers’ rights; environmental rights; product and professional approvals and recognition; immigration terms; and the whole future of trade in across goods and services. This would likely drag on for many years, and interfere with British trade deals proposed with the likes of China, America and India. Indeed, history suggests that it might take a decade to conclude satisfactory sustainable treaties with the EU across the range of trade, economics, security and defence matters, from fishing rights to broadcasting to data protection. No deal, ironically, would be the least clean Brexit of all.