A sarcophagus over No Deal Brexit?

The "sarcophagus" covering Chernobyl reactor 4

One day in 1986 I had a phone call about the radioactive clouds heading our way from the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. "How can we protect our children?" was the gist of the enquiry, and I had a vested interest too - our first son was born three weeks after the explosions in Chernobyl reactor 4.

What could I say? There was a lot of nasty stuff up there, and how much of it we got and where we got it would depend on the vagaries of weather at various levels of the atmosphere. I told my caller that - going by media reports and the scientific reading and discussion I'd managed to do - stoking up fear and lying awake at night was likely to do more harm than the fallout itself.

I don't feel too guilty about my advice. The plume of radioactive particles was widening and dissipating, and the amount which came down in the UK doesn't seem to have caused massive damage. Some British farmers ended up not being able to put sheep meat from upland areas into the market without testing for contamination (the restrictions were lifted on the last few hundred sheep farmers in 2012), I remember herb crops such as thyme being restricted for a while, and there were calls - which I backed - for the issue of iodine tablets.

Why did the question come my way? Being a recent chair of the local anti-nuclear/CND group draws attention, and I'd done a lot of reading over the few years before. But my formal qualifications were limited to an O-level in physics

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What brings this memory back on Christmas Day? Jonathan Lis writes for Prospect on the horrors of a No Deal Brexit: "Hard Brexiteers accuse Remainers of stoking up this worry. The reverse is true: I am doing my best to reassure people that it won’t happen. Because it won’t". This time we're not facing the rudimentary forces of nature - radiation and weather - we're up against human-made institutions trying to deal with a human-made problem, and they will manage to stop themselves before the worst happens. I hope he's right, and I think he could be.

Lis is hard on May, and she deserves it. Her plan is to "blackmail" MPs into voting for the withdrawal package by waving the spectre of No Deal in front of them. "May is literally threatening the country with economic and social devastation in order to win a parliamentary vote. It is the most recklessly irresponsible peacetime act of any prime minister in modern history."

He goes on: "Last week, the car industry released an unprecedented statement asking the government and parliament to take no-deal off the table. The prime minister will not. British employers are openly begging her not to sacrifice them, and she refuses. It doesn’t matter that she is bluffing. Companies have to believe what the government tells them, and many are already preparing to leave. Once they have gone, they will not return. Quite an achievement for the self-proclaimed party of business".

"We can 'take back control' of Britain but not of France" he points out. "Full customs and regulation checks will take place on outbound traffic across the Channel, and that means incoming traffic will grind to a halt. Food and medicine will not arrive. People will die." As a Remainer I'd argue that he's being a bit apocalyptic, and go into the detail, but he tells me that "no-deal is a game to May", and she has approved all these threats.

According to the Guardian, Michael Gove told the Commons environmental audit committee (and I can only say he's playing May's game - note the "will" rather than "would"): "If you have friction and disruption – and we are trying to minimise that – between Dover and Calais, then the ability to get food, particularly perishable items on to the market, will be impeded... That is likely to drive some price increases. It is also the case that some of the alternative routes by which food will reach our shores will add additional costs, for example Spanish produce being rerouted... rather than going through Dover/Calais can increase costs... So I do think there is a real risk in the event of a no deal of price spikes in certain foodstuffs."

And from the evidence session itself (I wish all committees would publish transcripts as quickly as the best): "We would need to apply for third country status in order to be able to export. I'm convinced for a variety of reasons, including informal contacts with European actors, that we will have third country status, but I wouldn't want for a second to suggest that the granting of third country status means that all concerns disappear, because as this committee knows, it is the case that for all products of animal origin they need to go through a border inspection post and there are no border inspection posts yet at Calais... the existence of additional checks will create frictions and of course it is the case that there will also be tariff barriers that will particularly badly hit livestock farmers and food producers." 

The vote on the withdrawal package was scheduled for 11 December, and pulled when May admitted to herself that she couldn't win it. Now it's promised "in the week of 14 January" after another five days of debate (which needs a new timetable motion to be passed in advance, which in turn means a new Dominic Grieve amendment to try to assert Parliament's authority if everything falls apart) and the FT suggests "Tory officials have expressed growing confidence that Mrs May’s Brexit deal will pass the House of Commons next month, although they see it as an attritional struggle that may involve the bill being defeated on the first and even second attempt".

Some MPs still say No Deal is OK, and a campaign on Twitter in recent months tells me that No Deal is all any Leave voter ever wanted (which is demonstrably untrue, but we'll put that aside for now). Lis's case, and our only hope, is that the withdrawal package hits the buffers and dies in a heap, and that Parliament then takes this thing by the scruff of the neck (mixed metaphor overload!): "Many commentators point out that no-deal is the legal default. They are technically correct. But just imagine we get to say, 20^th March, and we are heading for no-deal in nine days’ time. Do we really think that MPs will do nothing? That the cabinet won’t disband? That the government will win a confidence vote? That the EU will kick us over the cliff-edge when neither parliament nor the people want to jump? No-deal may be the default but in reality it is a choice."

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I was talking to my niece's husband this morning. He's a Leaver, and argued that May has come back with such a bad deal because she never believed in it in the first place. She couldn't answer Jeremy Paxman's question "When did you change your mind on the biggest issue of the day?" during last year's election campaign but she does exhibit the enthusiasm of the convert nowadays - must be something to do with her faith giving her confidence she is "doing the right thing".

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And on the subject of Chernobyl, I was lucky enough in 2016 to get into a screening of Birdsong - Stories from Pripyat (with music - live on the occasion - by No 2 son's friend Robin Richards). It might well be one of those art projects which disappears into somebody's archives, but if it does re-emerge, I recommend it.