David Davis admits possibility of UK exiting EU without trade deal
I have a bad feeling about all of this. I was listening to David Davis saying with a sense of zealous brio yesterday that the size of his department had doubled and he expected it to double again – anyone for reversing the last five years of local authority lay offs?! The article tells us:
David Davis, the Brexit secretary, has admitted the UK could have to revert to World Trade Organisation tariffs if it leaves the EU without having struck a trade deal with the bloc.
The cabinet minister said this was not a very likely outcome but still a possibility if the UK was not successful in talks with the EU.
The Labour MP Chuka Umunna, chair of the campaign group Vote Leave Watch, said Davis had “let the cat out of the bag [about] a real possibility that we could fall out of the EU with no trade deal, and face swingeing and destructive tariffs on key exports.”
Davis told a Commons foreign affairs committee hearing on Tuesday: “If you’re after a factual statement of what the outcome could be, I guess it’s what is commonly known in the world at large as World Trade Organisation rules.
“That’s, I guess, the conclusion of what the situation would be if we were outside the union with no deal. But I would not want anyone to think that that was in my view a very likely outcome.”