Hammond-Fox reconciliation will help UK have a BETTER Brexit, says former Tory officer
Speaking on talkRADIO, Conservative Home assistant editor Henry Hill told Julia Hartley-Brewer the new consensus on a transition period will give way to a "productive" approach to Brexit. The former communications officer for Tory MP Julian Knight said, given recent development in the Tory party, Chancellor Hammond had been able to "reassure" Brexiteers that a temporary deal will not be used to keep the UK in the European Union "by stealth." Mr Hill commented: "I do think it's productive that we've seen a consensus emerging about a transitional period because one of the biggest hurdles to finding a unified Conservative position was Brexiteer scepticism about the transition period and worries that it would be used as a way to stay in the EU by the back door."
GETTY Henry Hill said Brexiteers feared a transition deal would delay Brexit "indefinetely."
He explained that the fervently pro-Leave members of the Conservative party were concerned about the UK remaining an active member of the single market and the customs union. Mr Hill said: "The worry of the Brexiteers was that, if we find ourselves in a transition period which involves staying in both of those things, it would not create any incentive to create alternatives when Britain left. "One of the challenges of Brexit is that we plan so much stuff through the EU that we'd suddenly have to create new regulatory agencies, new bodies, new quangos to do the job the European Union used to do. "If we stayed in the single market and the customs union we'd still be outsourcing a huge amount of government and economic policies to Brussels, and that might actually mean that we didn't turn up developing the alternatives we needed."