Political Campaigner on Delaying Brexit: 'It’s an Utter Waste of Time'

According to reports, the British government has been discussing how to extend Article 50. In other words, secretly planning to delay Brexit. Sputnik spoke about it to political campaigner Michael Swadling.

Sputnik: Is delaying Article 50 going to resolve any outstanding Brexit issues?

Michael Swadling: It's an utter waste of time. There's a fundamental difference between agreeing a deal, and saying we just need a couple more months to implement all the legislation around it, and we want to extend Article 50 by a couple of months to enable that, at the end of which we'd be in a full Brexit, on some sort of managed deal.

That's one thing and reasonable people would accept that, but that's not what this is. This is, we are a government that cannot get our act together, we are working with a parliament that cannot get its act together, and we have a parliament of MPs that are willingly ignoring the will of the British people.

These people work for us, they don't seem to get it, and any attempt to delay Brexit is really just an excuse to try and stop it.

READ MORE: Motion to Extend Article 50 in No-Deal Case Aims to ‘Keep UK Bound to EU' — MP

Sputnik: Has the situation regarding the Irish border been overblown?

Michael Swadling: Who's implementing this hard border? The EU have said they won't, the Irish government has said they won't and the British government has said they won't.

This really is the most farcical idea, that there might be trouble over something that everyone involved has said won't happen.

Lots of borders between friendly countries around the world are not physical barriers; you go along the US-Canadian border and most of it is just mileposts, and there's simply no concerns about us keeping our border open.

If there are certain goods and services that can't be sold or traded in each country, you deal with them at the point of trading, you don't have to deal with them when they cross a physical piece of land.

Of course, we have a border today between the EU and Ireland on a whole host of areas like taxation, legislation, we don't have it on customs, but so it will be there for customs, I'm sure somehow we will cope with a non-physical border that we have today, just covering a bit more remit.

The views expressed in this article are those of the speaker and do not necessarily reflect those of Sputnik.