No Deal is better than the crummy deal negotiated by May. WTO terms are slightly less advantageous but we can negotiate our own trade deals going forward.
The Withdrawal Agreement is NOT the final deal. It is a stopping post to a deal. The WA could mean we end up on WTO terms eventually OR it could mean we have a much closer relationship to the EU than that.
All the WA does, is settle some of the issues relating to the shock of leaving the EU by providing a stepping stone to a new relationship and a transition period.
The popular misconception is that May's deal is the final deal on offer. Its not.
No deal means no trade deals.
No trade deals means no trade.
No trade means no goods or services.
No goods or services means no food imports, medicine imports, imports of power, flights landing from other countries.
Overnight these things would just stop with no deal.
This is also incorrect. What is most likely if we have customs arrangments reinstated over night in a no deal scenario is a supply chain shock, caused by delays of goods coming in and out of the country. Few companies know what documentation would be required, which would lead to problems at the border in addition to the simple increase in the length of time that checks take. Its been estimated that a delay of just 2 minutes per lorry would bring the country to a halt with massive shortages of things imported.
Because we have been so used to Just In Time manufacturing, even a slight delay could lead to production lines being shut down costing businesses thousands in the process.
In terms of planning for this several car manufacturers are planning for this by having costly shut downs around the 29th March. They would not do this if they thought there wasn't a large risk to the supply chain.
Its worth noting the money that government is putting into No Deal planning now too. Thats different from pure 'project fear' stuff. Both government and business are looking at potential problems with no deal and are risk assessing them. Its hard to argue that this is purely about scaring people at this point.
'The Backstop'
I'm going to do an explainer of what the backstop is and is supposed to do, because quite frankly I'm so pissed off at the media not doing so.
The Backstop is a mechanism designed to protect the Good Friday Agreement from being broken either accidentally or deliberately. The EU want any deal to take this into consideration and to ensure it has been properly addressed in decision making - mainly because they have lost trust in the UK government to take the issue seriously. This is why there is no time limit on it. This does not necessarily stop a harder style brexit; it does make it more difficult and such a suggestion would require serious thought and a workable solution which to date no one has come up with. It doesn't mean there isn't one. The main point is that we have more than one international agreement to which we have obligations to fulfil when we consider when leaving the EU. We can not disregard it, because we want to rip up one agreement.
When politicians say they want to get rid of the backstop, they are in effect saying that they do not want to protect the GFA. The problem is that the backstop has become a euphimism for hiding the truth of what these politicians say. Some of them are on record in the past as opposing the agreement and would welcome the opportunity to rip up the GFA. This is obviously a concern.
No Deal has the effect of breaking the GFA by accident purely because it would force a hard border - because of BOTH EU and WTO rules.
On top of this if we no deal we break an international peace treaty. Which isn't a good look if you are trying to make a bunch of new international deals. It brings your reputation and trust into question.
I do think there are lots of things that people, no matter what they voted, do not understand properly.
This is highlighted most by the likes of Jeremy Corbyn and Jacob Rees-Mogg (and many many others) frequently talking about the customs union and having not a clue what it means you can and can't do. Or talking about WTO terms and what you can and can't do, which is utterly bollocks.
Anyone who doesn't spend the time to sit down and read a lot of the detail from those who do this for a living, don't have a hope of understanding it.
I have spent a lot of time doing this, and even now I couldn't honestly tell you off the top of my head how WTO tariffs work. Cos its so frikking complicated. I do know certain fundamental errors that are current being pushed as tropes by many MPs though. And thats actually alarming.
I think the best way to describe no deal is that it is a 'shock event' which we are seriously underprepared for which will have very serious consequences which in some cases are potentially a danger to life. No deal as a possibility might not be so bad, if we did have adequate planning or capacity to crisis manage. The trouble is that its very clear that we don't simply because of the sheer scale of the problem.
The risk of it going horribly wrong is huge. And might not be a question of something we would recover from in 10, 20 or even 30 years. It could be such a structural shock that we never recover from it.
And whilst I generally do believe that necessity is the mother of invention, no deal is simply playing a game of Russian Roulette and its too much of a risk.
The scale of the ramifications of no deal is mind blowing. And as such I do not believe that ANYONE can fully understand how no deal will play out in reality. I just understand the scale of the challenge and the lack of provisions in place to deal with all the changes that it could entail. Its thousands of crisis all at once.
Its all so deeply frustrating.