Sputnik: Theresa May is travelling to Brussels today to seek a breakthrough on her Brexit deal after Labour ditched commitments to stay outside of a customs union with the EU post-Brexit. How significant is all this and will Theresa May be successful?
So are these developments significant in the sense that they may be an attempt to stop Brexit from happening at all then yes… significant in the same side of the positive? Well, I have grave doubts I don't doubt the possibility that there may be something comes out of this which would be which would be Brexit, but as I say the EU cannot possibly allow Britain to leave the EU on anything like favourable terms because we didn't have a queue at the door from other countries wanting to do exactly the same thing. They are trying to make it as difficult as possible and the UK Government is basically making it easy for them.
Donald MacKay: Well, I would suspect that if the game is finished, whenever that is, we will either have a Brexit that's not really a Brexit or actually we be still in the EU. Labour's change is kind of going down that road. There may be internal problems within the Labour Party with people who don't like this sort of move but the overwhelming majority of the political establishment in the UK want basically to stay in the EU and whenever they say anything or wherever the proposed anything it's all basically designed to make sure that we don't really leave the EU. I think that hence my reference to an elaborate game — this is not in a way difficult. There are people within my own party who have discussed this in detail and whose advice I'm sure would be readily available to people if they wish it. If we're leaving this, then let's just leave, just get out.
We're perfectly capable of resolving any of those matters in our own time but when we start talking about presenting cases like old customs union and single markets and we're all going to starve and our hospitals will not have medicines… this is all tactics being used to imply that a country like Great Britain is going to sink beneath the waves if we don't embrace and that is complete nonsense. The media I'm afraid is largely to blame for this.
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Sputnik: On the subject of a no deal, it's an option that's been discussed a lot amongst the British population with recent polling still showing that a No Deal Brexit is the preferred choice of exit for the UK… with this in mind, is a no deal an option that should that be considered by the government?
Donald MacKay: Absolutely definitely. I think this has all been misreported because I would like people to categorically state the actual danger of no deal. I mean by that not people vaguely saying we won't have this and we won't have that but what physically will we be unable to do that we currently can do and that there's likely to be some measure of teething problems is not in dispute, but let's not elevate those into some kind of national crisis and that's what the media afraid of doing and as a result of which the public or becoming alarmed when we perfectly capable of governing ourselves, perfectly capable of continuing as we do at the moment, and ideally, of course, it would be better to come to some arrangement with the EU but in the absence of any goodwill to do that, then no deal option should certainly be on the cards.
The views expressed in this article are those of the speaker and do not necessarily reflect those of Sputnik.
