A BAND of EU-funded academics have released a doom-laden report into Brexit claiming that Britain is heading towards a ‘hard’ Brexit which does not include a trade agreement with Brussels.
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The research group UK in a Changing Europe said the referendum result has united the EU’s other 27 states in opposition to Britain, whilst at the same time threatening the break-up of our own 300-year-old United Kingdom.
And the academic behind the study said he would put his mortgage on Britain ending up leaving the Brussels club without trade arrangements in place because EU leaders are unwilling to compromise on free movement.
The report, investigating the complexities involved in the upcoming negotiations with EU leaders, comes as Theresa May gears up to trigger Article 50 by the end of March.
It suggests the UK civil service is underprepared for the mammoth task of handling Brexit, and adds that leaving the EU could lead Scotland and Northern Ireland to opt for independence.
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The academics raise the possibility that Nicola Sturgeon’s nationalists could acquire the power to block any Brexit deal agreed by Mrs May, sparking a constitutional crisis.
Their report states: “The political fall-out from any of the devolved assemblies not endorsing the UK line may, however, prove considerable, and provide a further stimulus to a redefinition of the relations between the nations of the UK.”
They also slam the prime minister’s assertion that “Brexit means Brexit” as insufficient, saying neither MPs nor the public know enough about the Government’s aims in the negotiations.
Anand Menon, professor of European politics at King’s College London told reporters that Britons are “little closer to knowing what Brexit actually means” six months on from the vote.
But asked what kind of Brexit he expects, he replied: “I’d put my mortgage on hard.
“If you combine that with the sheer levels of bitterness I think we can expect to come out of the Article 50 negotiations, let alone the trade negotiations, my imagination falls short of being able to see a path from where we are now to what we’d call a soft Brexit.”
Fellow academic Catherine Barnard, a professor of European law at the University of Cambridge, warned Britain is facing a “chasm” between leaving the bloc in spring 2019 and securing a new relationship with Brussels which will need filling with a transitional deal.
She said: “If there was good will on both sides, you could see the two sets of negotiations - the divorce and the future relationship - being done in parallel.
“At the moment the EU is playing hardball on this, and they’re saying we’re not going to even start negotiating any future deal until you become a third state.”
Another of the researchers involved in the project, Iain Begg, also raised the prospect that Britain will have to continue to pay into the EU until at least 2020 because Brussels budgets are set for seven-year periods.
The politics professor at the London School of Economics said the thorny issue of contributions will be extremely politically difficult for Mrs May given the leave camp’s pledges to save on cash payouts to Brussels.
He said: “The money issue is going to be far more potent than has been let on so far.”
The UK in a Changing Europe is based at King’s College London and is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). It collaborates closely with the Brussels backed National Institute Of Economic and Social Research (NIESR), to which a number of its academics belong.
http://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/746792/Brexit-news-EU-funded-academics-European-Union-article-50
