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.

I’m a leaver and I think it should be a longer transition period

I voted remain in the referendum.

I honestly don't really feel I care at this point, but I'm leaning towards saying no, we shouldn't extend longer. The other EU members are turning on each other pretty rapidly, this pandemic has been incredibly telling. No one was sticking up for the principles of the EU when suddenly countries started closing borders, despite the fact that stopping international travel was pretty irrelevant for stopping the pandemic (by the point it happened) and stopping local travel would have been far more effective. Several countries have screwed each other over with regard to ventilator/mask access. I'm not sure how much longer the EU will last, so "a deal" might become quite irrelevant.

If I'm wrong, and the EU does survive, I think the threat of a no deal might seem less scary after COVID, which would give us more negotiating power..

We can’t afford to bail out Greece and Italy again

The UK doesn’t bail out Eurozone countries. The UK has never bailed out Greece or Italy.

I don't care.

NO

YANBU. No one has time to get this done right now.

Brexit always has been an expensive distraction which since it kicked off has cost the country more than its payments to the EU.

I can’t help but feel that the UK might have been better prepared for this pandemic if it hadn’t had its head up its ar** for the past few years trying to deal with Brexit and instead had a chance to channel money and effort into things that really do matter, like healthcare.

Plus, for all those who wail about democracy, rights etc, is it morally right that we try to force countries like Italy and Spain to the negotiating table when they are going to have enough to cope with in the months to come (as, indeed, might we)?

The world we emerge into after CV will be a completely different one. All the social and economic arguments both for and against brexit will likely be largely invalid.
Not only should it be delayed but there will be increasing justification for another referendum based on the realities of the post Covid world.
I was/am a passionate remainer but I really have no idea what will be in the national interest in 6 months time.
What is likely however is that the UK's national debt will be enormous, there will be unemployment, there will be a significant global recession and our health service will be struggling to rebuild after the deaths / retirement of many clinical personnel.
Either way, enacting the slim "will of the people" from 4 years ago should be fairly low on the governments list of priorities after all this is over although if leaving truly is the best course of action then I would support it if done properly.

We have left the EU already. We're out. Gone.

This is a phase when we're sticking to the rules until a deal on the future is decided, but we have left.

For reasons of food secuity alone it should be extended. There will be huge problems with food supply due to the virus later this year and that coupled with a hard brexit would be very dangerous.

I think the EU mega structure may itself be in difficulty
All EU countries will be in extreme financial difficulties after this , and net contributor countries may well need to prioritise their own citizens welfare , rather than propping up a huge bureaucracy .
The benefactors such as Hungry , may leave if they do not get support

The EU may have to revert to a scaled down trading bloc , which maybe Britain could rejoin,

I think the current situation is giving the country an excellent taste of what life could be like after Brexit - no one to pick farmers’ crops in the summer, a realisation how reliant the UK is on supplies from abroad to feed itself, companies going to the wall because they are unable to trade. We can also see how the great British public might react - frantic stockpiling and a general every man for himself approach. Seeing how we cope with these problems now should give a good indication of how we might cope after a hard Brexit so hopefully we can try and tailor what we actually want from an agreement based on this experience. So yes I think an extension would be a good idea. And I think you can probably guess how I voted in the referendum.

I also wonder why, when the entire world is suffering from a pandemic thought to have originated from something dodgy in the food chain, we’d be so happy to to rip all the regulations around food safety to trade with countries who can’t be bothered with that sort of thing.

Yes, hopefully anyone with any delusions about how they'd be fine under No Deal because they only eat food from the UK anyway, or other such dipshittery, has been disbursed of that notion now.

It's an interesting point about the EU itself being possibly changed by all this. Some of the comments I've seen are wishful thinking, but this is an economically and culturally seismic experience we're in the middle of and things may look very different when it's over. What seems advantageous to one side now isn't guaranteed to look that way in a year.

I think we park Brexit negotiations entirely for the time being to deal with Corona. That is our one and only priority at the moment.

If we're still in the woods so to speak as the deadline approaches, then maybe it will be the time to discuss extending. Not now. My feeling is that most extend the deadline noises are coming from people formally known as remainers who are keen to hold on to any last fibre of EU membership and aren't afraid to use this horrible crisis as a chance to kick the can even further down the road.

For reasons of food secuity alone it should be extended. There will be huge problems with food supply due to the virus later this year and that coupled with a hard brexit would be very dangerous.

^^ This - we apparently haven't people to pick what we can grow I don't know why we'd make it even harder to import food especially when the food growing countries may well be facing similar problems.

Of course it should. Quite rightly at the moment the Government and European Governments are focused on fighting this virus and keeping people safe. The Brexit trade negotiations are a distraction and there is no time for them to be properly scrutinised. The clock should start ticking again once this period is over. This is the time for us to stick together not be apart from our nearest neighbours.
I voted remain. But I'd like to think that all reasonable leavers would say the same.

The food security problem and the difficulty of finding seasonal workers to pick our crops was one of the things Brexiteers liked to call Project Fear. It’s safe to say the problem has now been clearly demonstrated by the current crisis - or do some people still think that’s nothing to worry about.

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

Of course they were tens of thousands were. They were pulled off other work to work on it. Just because the Brexit Department was closed doesn't mean civil Servants were not working on it. Civil Servants in every Department were working on Brexit. Who do you think was doing all the background work, negotiating a deal, working on getting new trade deals, preparing for a hard Brexit preparing how immigration will work, preparing border forces, customs etc etc. Brexit is an incredibly complex subject and just because Boris said Brexit is done it really isn't yet.

The transition should be extended and then we should go back to a public vote to see whether we still want this. Even though it's 'the law' now, we have all seen how quickly new laws can be agreed and implemented.
BBC Politics posted something on Facebook yesterday about extending the Brexit transition period, which brought out several nutters saying 'Leave Now, no deal etc...' These people are the epitome of stupid in my view. Why anyone would think we need a massive period of disruption and uncertainty on top of a massive period of disruption and uncertainty is beyond me. At the very least, the country needs time to heal (get people back into work/ensure food supplies etc) before running off a cliff edge.

Dinkydonk i completely disagree with your analysis. There are a lot of shit stirring articles/opinion pieces from the UK media and some European based eurosceptics doing the rounds. There are of course huge political pressures everywhere because of this crisis but health is a national competence and even then
there is a hell of a lot of collaboration and cooperation going on with regard to equipment, treatment etc. There is some hesitation around committing to funding through a
Euronbonds but that will be resolved because there is so much at stake. Your line about this crisis strengthening the UK's negotiating position is straight out of Ben Habib's mouth and is pretty awful actually.

In response to the OP yes it should be extended. Efforts to tackle this crisis should take place at a pan European/global level . When that is achieved a FTA that benefits everyone and rebuilds our societies again can be negotiated.

There is a petition you can sign on this here
petition.parliament.uk/petitions/300412