British High Commissioner Stuart Gill. Photo: Chris Sant FournierWith five weeks to go until Brexit, Theresa May still shuttling to Brussels, and MPs from both Labour and Conservatives abandoning their parties, it is perhaps not easy to look at the future with confidence.
But British High Commissioner Stuart Gill told the Times of Malta that in spite of the short-term challenges, he is confident that the outcome will be a positive one once the dust has settled.
Viewed from outside the UK, it is not always easy to understand why there is so much resistance to the deal hammered out last autumn, let alone to why a second referendum has been ruled out and what would happen if the UK left with no deal. One question at least seems to have dissipated over the past weeks: whether there will be a Brexit at all.
Mr Gill goes through various aspects of the scenarios, explaining what could and could not happen at each twist and turn – but also what the long-term outcome should be.
However, his ultimate message was a positive one: “Our friends in Europe are going to remain our friends in Europe. We work through Nato, the UN and the Commonwealth. And that is a pretty powerful network of alliances and friends, among people with whom we share values and beliefs – including Malta.
“We are looking to a very positive future. We are not going to go and sit in a corner; we are going to agree on our own trade deals. We are going to have a close relationship with the EU and with many other countries. And we are very positive. There is a process and it might be challenging at the moment. No one said this would be easy: it is complicated. But there is a direction of travel.”
Listen to the full interview here. Audio: Chris Sant Fournier (mp3 file)
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Highlights of the interview: On the backstop: No one in the negotiations – and certainly not the British government – wants to do anything which affects the Northern Ireland peace agreement, the so-called Good Friday peace agreement. On the peace agreement: An open border with a common travel area, and all the cross-border movement … was a crucial part of the peace agreement as it took away the security on the border and any concept of a ‘hard border’. Going back to that runs the risk of going back to a situation which would recreate those tensions. On another referendum: What would the question be and would it solve the situation that we are currently in now? The government has made it very clear that we had a democratic decision and it would be a betrayal of that position not to see it through. On bilateral trade deals: Every trade agreement that the EU has so far agreed with a third country started without regulatory convergence. In this case, we are starting from the opposite. We already have regulatory convergence so the question is not how close can we get – but how far apart we want to remain… On the future relationship: In the course of the negotiations, there are going to be a lot of creative ideas. But there will be a very close trading relationship between the EU and the UK, with the UK outside the institutions and the customs union. On the impact: It is not a move towards isolationism. As the Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said, it does not mean we are going to move the United Kingdom geographically to some quiet part of the globe. On Malta: Our relationship will get stronger. We may not be sitting next to each other in the rooms in Brussels and Strasbourg and Luxembourg. But our shared history and beliefs and constant interaction at all levels of economics, culture, security, you name it, these are going to go on. |