Ivan Rogers: the realities of a no-deal Brexit

As so often in the last three years, much of our political debate is ducking the central strategic questions and is obsessing, in increasingly hysterical fashion on all sides, about tactical ones.

We face the most explosive political week for years, perhaps decades. But remarkably little of the debate is about our real options. We should be thinking 10 to 20 years ahead, not 10 weeks.

The primary issue with a ‘no deal’ Brexit is not, and never has been, how far our domestic contingency planning enables us to mitigate the short-term shock. That is hugely important. If ‘no deal’ happens, the day to day consequences – malign or benign – will inevitably drown out all else in the news for months. No developed country will have done anything analogous in several generations, let alone by choice.

But this ought, nevertheless, to be secondary. The primary issue is our medium-long term destination. The central problem with ‘no deal’ is that it is being heavily (mis)sold as providing certainty, finality – a ‘clean break’ – when it would manifestly do nothing of the sort.