News that the government is stockpiling medicine proves how disruptive a no-deal Brexit would be

Any wise government has to plan for outcomes it would not have chosen to happen. And so it is with Brexit. The health minister Matt Hancock has revealed that the NHS is stockpiling medicines and blood supplies in the case of disruption should there be no agreement over the terms under which the UK leaves the EU next year. Companies have started or will soon start similar planning to protect their supply lines in the event of customs holdups at the airports or the ports. Financial institutions have started to move staff and open offices in Europe to continue to service their customers, while some European businesses have opened units in the UK.

All this is prudent. However, the scale of the potential disruption should focus the minds of the UK negotiating team that a deal with Europe is vastly preferable to no deal. Not having a deal would be damaging to Europe, more damaging perhaps in the long term than the EU team in Brussels appreciates. But in the short term at least, the hit to the UK would be greater.

There are many reasons to want a deal with Europe. Avoidance of disruption is just the obvious starting point. Whatever happens the UK economy will remain closely bound up with that of the continent as, for example, that of Switzerland is integrated now.

That will mean that the UK will have to comply with EU standards to export goods there, just as it has to comply with US product standards to export there. To see that as somehow being subservient to Europe is absurd.

Longer term, continental Europe will remain a major market for UK goods and services, even without a deal. Indeed, were the negotiations to break down, it is overwhelmingly likely that they would be restarted very swiftly. It would be in the self-interest of both sides to do so.

There are many reasons, too, to welcome the streamlining of the UK negotiating team. For a start whatever deal is or is not reached, it will be for the prime minister of the day to sell the outcome to the British people. Bringing the core negotiators into No 10 makes practical sense.

It also makes clear that the arrangements with the EU must be acceptable to the 48 per cent of the country that voted Remain as well as the 52 per cent who voted Leave. The task of politicians is to reconcile divergent opinions – to consolidate the core, not to inflame the fringes.

It is the nature of EU negotiations that there will be a last-minute scramble, a night of high drama, the clock being stopped, as they say. We have seen this many times. Because of the way these things happen there is an extreme danger of miscalculation by either side – of no deal, or of a deal that will come unstuck in the months ahead. This danger makes it all the more important that UK voters should be given the opportunity, in the cold light of day, to approve or disapprove of what the government has done on their behalf.

To plan for no deal is prudent. The government is wise to do that. But ultimately it is not the government’s decision. It is for the people to decide.

The Independent has launched a campaign for a Final Say referendum here