Brexit negotiations

The cardinal sin was that David Cameron told civil servants not to make a contingency plan in case Leave won the referendum. 

Had they made one it might have been the Norway option and everything would be very different now. 

We'd have left for one thing and on good terms with the EU - and with  no economic problems.

Michel Barnier said yesterday that Theresa May never threatened leaving the EU with no deal during the negotiations.

Martin Selmayr said yesterday that no-one took the possibility of the UK leaving with no deal seriously because they knew no preparations had been made by the UK. This was a
decision taken by the Treasury and Philip Hammond.

In an interview with the BBC programme Panorama recorded in March, the European commission’s vice-president, Frans Timmermans, said he was amazed at British lack of preparedness of the UK negotiators when they arrived in Brussels for the first talks.

“We thought they are so brilliant. That in some vault somewhere in Westminster there will be a Harry Potter-like book with all the tricks and all the things in it to do.”

David Davis disillusioned him: 

“I saw him not coming, not negotiating, grandstanding elsewhere [and] I thought, ‘Oh my God, they haven’t got a plan, they haven’t got a plan. That was really shocking, frankly, because the damage if you don’t have a plan …”