Britain Offers Plan to Avoid Immediate ‘Brexit’ Trade Chaos<br />"Let’s be honest, if we had an effective electoral law leading Brexiteers would now be in jail #wheresmy350maweekboris," Mr. Chapman tweeted, a reference to Mr. Johnson’s claims<br />that an additional 350 million pounds a week — $525 million at the currency rates then prevailing — would be available for health care after Britain’s withdrawal.<br />15, 2017<br />To Guy Verhofstadt, the European Parliament’s coordinator on Britain’s exit from the European Union, it is "fantasy"; to Britain’s opposition Labour Party, "contradictory";<br />and to Nicola Sturgeon, the first minister of Scotland, "daft." On Tuesday, reaction to a new British proposal designed to avert a damaging rupture in trade when the country leaves the European Union underscored the deepening troubles in Britain’s contentious path to negotiating its withdrawal.<br />After months of internal feuding, Britain’s government said it wanted to remain — temporarily — in something similar to the European customs union immediately after the withdrawal, scheduled for 2019, to avert the types of border checks<br />that could cause chaos at British ports and at the border with Ireland.<br />In any event, the British plan was given a cool reception by European Union officials, who said there would be no negotiations on<br />that point until "divorce" issues have been settled, like the exit bill London would have to pay and the rights European Union citizens in Britain would have.<br />The tensions burst into public view last week when James Chapman, a former senior aide to Mr. Davis, described Brexit as a catastrophe, called for the creation of a new political party called the Democrats to oppose it, and suggested<br />that the foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, and other Brexit campaigners should be jailed for false claims made ahead of last year’s referendum (in which Britons voted 52 percent to 48 percent to leave).<br />One would allow for very different British and European Union customs systems,<br />but rely on technology to prevent trucks backing up at ports — a challenge for which Britain and its neighbors would certainly need to prepare.
