Do you think the Brexit transition period should be extended because of coronavirus?

[KenDodd]

Yabu - yes it should
Yanbu - no it shouldn't

Could you say how you voted in the referendum as well please. I suspect Leavers will all say no extension, Remainers will all say yes, extension.

Well obvious it should. If you divert shedloads if civil servants to handle Brexit, then divert a load more (the same ones?? I don’t know) to plan hospital building, payments to furloughed people etc etc then surely the day to day work of running the country can’t be done. I voted remain but that actually is irrelevant

Remain

But if we are leaving I’d like to leave in the best possible way we can

I just don’t see how its possible til this virus is sorted...however long thats going to take

Of course it should be, it would be absurd not to. Preparing for Brexit, especially if it’s a hard Brexit, is a huge amount of work for companies. How can they be doing that now?

Yes. We'll be in enough of a mess as it is. Although I wonder whether some of the mavericks in number 10 might want to go all 'scorched earth'

Well of course it should. . . The hardcore brexiteers will be spitting feathers though which is actually a fun thing to cheer us up at the moment 😉

It should be extended. I voted Remain but that's irrelevant. It would be madness to knowingly create yet more harm to the economy in these circumstances

Yes. These are exceptional circumstances.
I voted Remain but surely everyone can see that 2020 is pretty much a write off. All that matters this year is survival and trying desperately to keep the economy afloat

Of course it should. The world has other problems right now.

Does anybody think it should be extended who voted Leave though?

For what it's worth I voted Remain and think transition should be permanently extended. We would have left anyway so Leave voters would have got what they voted for. As for extending because of CV in some ways I don't see the point. I can't imagine anything other than 'no deal' anyway with this government. Brexit is going to be shit, CV is going to be shit, fuck the country.

None of the parties involved are in a position to handle anything complex that could be delayed for a while right now. We get through this and then set about getting the best deal possible. Its almost monstrous to expect anyone in charge to have any headspace or resources to devote to anything other than the pandemic right now.

I'm a Remainer.

Voted leave, and yes we must have an extension.

Cannot be done at the last minute. The EU needs six months notice and needs to agree unanimously.

Might tell us to sod off. And we would deserve it if they did.

I meant to write ' the country's fucked' not 'fuck the country'.

In the current circumstances I don't think we'd be told to sod off. Nobody knows round the corner so sticking your neck out right now feels risky, and even if they wanted to the optics would be awful.

It's easier all round on everyone to magnanimously say of course we must deal with this terrible threat first, human life comes first etc, we will reconvene once any of us have any idea what the hell is going on the coronavirus situation has been dealt with.

Voted remain. I'm unsure because I think the government was pushing for a no deal hard brexit. I don't see how we'll be in a position to deal with that for years. So what difference would an extension make. Might as well make it part of the mega recession.

Of course not

I don't think Leave/Remain is relevant, it's a given that we will be leaving. I do think it should be extended though as proper negotiations can't possibly be carried out and everything is so up in the air right now. It all needs to go on the backburner until the pandemic dampens down a bit and some sense of normalcy resumes.

God I've missed Brexit! Makes a welcome change from Corona

God I've missed Brexit! Makes a welcome change from Corona

I know! I long for the days when all we had to worry about was bloody brexit.

We should definitely extend the transition period. Bit difficult to sort it all out in the middle of a bloody pandemic.

As I understand it, no civil servants were working on Brexit. That office had been closed down.

Definitely extend. Even Boris has gone quiet on the brexit front. Even Nigel bloody Farrage has shut up about it. No negotiations can be happening in this crisis, which could go on for months. The economy is already crashing due to covid19, falling off a cliff edge at the end of the transition period is in nobody’s best interests.

Needs to be extended. It doeesn't matter which way you voted- accounting deadlines for companies are being postponed, and negotiating trade deals is more complex than that, not less.

Our bureaucrats and politicians are going to all be busy sorting out the effects of coronavirus, off sick self-isolating or off on bereavement leave for the foreseeable future.

No, because the EU is going to be worse off financially than us. We can’t afford to bail out Greece and Italy again.

Even Nigel bloody Farrage has shut up about it.

Nope. I think it finally dawned on the BBC that Dr Farage Consultant Virologist was not the leading authority in this field and finally stopped inviting him on and told him to self-isolate hopefully on a permanent basis.

He's still on LBC on Sunday mornings.

Yes, and it will be.

Of course it needs to be extended.

We're probably heading into a major recession anyway, the last thing we need is to crash out with no deal.