The Express, April 5th, Matthew Patten
Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, the last of the remaining Remoaners are back, this time trying to weaponise Covid-19 to delay Brexit by extending the transition period beyond the end of this year.
I may get a tsunami of abuse for this, but life is for the living. We are more than capable of fighting the virus and getting on with Brexit planning and delivery. The few Remoaners left need to end their social distancing from the repeated and emphatic democratic decision of British people to get Brexit done. The priority now is to develop policies that best help Brexit Britain escape a Coronavirus-induced global depression. That’s why I’m delighted to be a director of the Centre for Brexit Policy, a new cross-party think tank aiming to do just that.
There are three reasons why the government should turn its back on the Covid Remoaners.
First, while the European Union and Remoaners desperately want to slow things down, there’s no practical reason why Brexit negotiations cannot continue. The EU is still fully functioning, earlier this week confirming that it is starting enlargement talks with Albania and North Macedonia. The European Parliament also met in Brussels, attended by Commission President Von der Leyen, and with special arrangements made to allow absent MEPs watch, participate and vote from home.
EU Heads of State and their advisors met on the same day in a virtual summit held by video conference. Across the UK, organisations have embraced new technologies to allow staff to continue working from home. Assertions that the government is struggling to recruit trade negotiators are nonsense when so many are now sitting at home with time on their hands. If over 500,000 people are willing to volunteer for the NHS, we can certainly find 150 ready to take on Mr Barnier.
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