Brexit could pose an \u201cexistential threat\u201d to the British government because there is simply not enough time to complete the process before the deadline set by Prime Minister Theresa May, experts suggest.<\/p>\n
According to an Institute for Government report, Brexit negotiations have come across as \u201cchaotic and dysfunctional.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Civil service departments, cut to the bone after years of Tory austerity, are now expected to cope with the extra task of managing Britain\u2019s withdrawal from the European Union, the report says.<\/p>\n \u201cWhitehall has most of the technical skills required to deliver Brexit,\u201d<\/em> it reads.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat Whitehall does not have is the capacity to deliver Brexit on top of everything else to which it is already committed.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n The warning comes after a special memo on Brexit developments by Deloitte was leaked on Tuesday, highlighting how the government had no plans for leaving the EU.<\/p>\n Downing Street rebuffed the document, saying it was \u201cunsolicited\u201d<\/em> and had no connection to the government. Deloitte released a statement on Tuesday night confirming the paper had been put together \u201cwithout access to No. 10 or input from any other government departments.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n The Times, which originally published the story, said \u201cthe statement was issued after pressure from the government and amid fears that the firm could be stripped of future contracts.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Deloitte has a series of long-standing contracts with state departments, including the Cabinet Office.<\/p>\n \u201cNo 10 were coming down hard on Deloitte so there was a negotiated statement which balanced distancing the government from the memo without denying that it had been the subject of conversations,\u201d<\/em> a Whitehall source told the Times<\/a>.<\/p>\n Can someone clarify this for me – it’s Deloitte and the BBC who are to blame for this Govt not having a clue about Brexit?<\/p>\n \u2014 Brian Moore (@brianmoore666) November 16, 2016<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n Foreign politicians have also piled on the criticism, accusing Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson of publicizing an \u201cintellectually impossible\u201d<\/em> and \u201cpolitically unviable\u201d<\/em> vision of post-Brexit Britain.<\/p>\n Dutch Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem told the British government not to expect continued free access to European markets after Brexit unless free movement of labor was kept on the agenda.<\/p>\n \u201cI think [Boris Johnson] is offering to the British people options that are really not available. To say \u2018we could be inside the internal market, keep full access to the internal market, but be outside the customs union\u2019 \u2013 this is just impossible, it doesn\u2019t exist,\u201d<\/em> he told BBC Newsnight.<\/p>\n \u201cThe opposite does exist. We have a customs union with Turkey but Turkey is not part of the internal market. So he is saying things that are intellectually impossible, politically unavailable, so I think he is not offering the fair approach that gives the British people a fair view of what is ahead.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n The warning came after Johnson implied in an interview that Britain would \u201cprobably\u201d<\/em> have to leave the EU customs union.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Via RT<\/a>. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission or license.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Brexit could pose an \u201cexistential threat\u201d to the British government because there is simply not enough time to complete the process before the deadline set by Prime Minister Theresa May, experts suggest. According to an Institute for Government report, Brexit negotiations have come across as \u201cchaotic and dysfunctional.\u201d Civil service departments, cut to the bone […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":279362,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-280144","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=280144"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280144\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/279362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=280144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=280144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=280144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n