The comments, which coincided with the resumption of Brexit talks in Brussels this week, marked one of the most pronounced admissions yet from a senior British government official about the prospect of a no-deal Brexit—a scenario British Prime Minister Theresa May famously said would be “better than a bad deal for Britain” in a 2017 speech. Though many within the government have insisted that an agreement with the EU is still within reach, virtually no one has admitted that failure could be seriously costly for both sides. Indeed, Hunt’s predecessor Boris Johnson said such a scenario would be “perfectly okay.” [...]
Hunt wasn’t wrong about no deal. Indeed, the potential consequences of failing to reach an agreement have been widely documented. In addition to both the legal and financial challenges the U.K. would face, there are also questions surrounding the impact it could have on the country’s ports, its borders, and the legal standing of its more than 3 million EU residents—just to name a few. [...]
But if the government is convinced that no deal is in fact not better than a bad deal after all, it has yet to say that clearly, as Hunt’s backtracking demonstrates. Wright said that while the no-deal papers do signal the government’s desire to be prepared for any outcome, “it’s not an outward rejection of ‘no deal is better than a bad deal,’ because I think they are still convinced that perhaps the EU’s proposal for what a final deal would look like is not acceptable for various reasons,” she said. “But I think they absolutely realize that not planning for a no deal [Brexit] would be catastrophic.”
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