Another day, another backtracking in the doom-laden predictions of what would happen as a result of a vote for Brexit. Back in May, World Trade Organisation (WTO) chief Roberto Azevedo told the Financial Times that Britain would not simply be allowed to ‘cut and paste’ its terms of membership with the WTO. We would, he suggested, effectively have to negotiate from scratch – a process which could take years, as it did when Liberia joined.
Today he has recanted, somewhat. ‘The UK is a member of the WTO today, it will continue to be a member tomorrow,’ he told Sky News. ‘There will be no discontinuity in membership. They have to renegotiate but that doesn’t mean they are not members. Trade will not stop, it will continue and members negotiate the legal basis under which that trade is going to happen.
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