The issue of our lack of trade negotiators seems to be another massive cock-up. According to the Financial Times:
*Sir Simon Fraser, former permanent secretary at the Foreign Office, said last month that Britain had 20 “active hands-on” trade negotiators, and would be up against 600 experienced trade specialists in Brussels.
Britain is turning to the private sector to prepare for Brexit, seeking to second consultants to boost a civil service with almost no experience of complex trade negotiations.
Sir Jeremy Heywood, the country’s top civil servant, has held talks with companies including accountants EY and KPMG, and the consultants McKinsey, as he prepares for a negotiation with Brussels described by outgoing prime minister David Cameron as “the most important task the British civil service has undertaken in decades”.
“We want the brightest and the best working on these complex negotiations,” said a government spokesperson. “It is right to draw on people with the necessary skills and expertise from within the civil service but also to look outside too.”
The senior partner of a leading London-based law firm said: “We’ve got super-smart people who understand the regulatory framework who will be intensely valuable.”
The companies told Sir Jeremy that their staff were already stretched helping clients deal with the fallout of Brexit and that while they want to help, it will come at a substantial price to the taxpayer.
The government is believed to have estimated that it needs between 700 and 750 extra staff to negotiate not just with the EU but with the other countries with which the bloc has trade deals.
“The government is going to struggle to gear up to have the bandwidth to properly negotiate the detailed cross-EU and wider bilateral trade deals across the globe,” said Iain Anderson, executive chairman of communications company Cicero.
One leading lawyer said staff were not willing to be seconded to government for the task and that the government’s hopes of recruiting enough people from the private sector for the task ahead was “dreaming”.
“The Cabinet Office needs to come down to reality,” this person said. “They will be confronted with people from the EU who live and breathe its rules. They should focus on getting people back from Brussels.”
To compound matters, some civil servants who have devoted their careers to developing Britain’s relations with the EU say they do not have the stomach to spend the next few years unravelling what they have built.
“Of course part of me thinks I have a duty to the country because I understand this stuff,” said one senior official. “But I could always go and make some money in the City instead.”"