The Prime Minister says he is ‘optimistic’ over getting a Brexit deal but says ‘it’s looking very, very difficult’.
It comes as Boris Johnson is set to travel to Brussels this week to meet with European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen to work towards a breakthrough.
‘I’m always hopeful… yes, I am very hopeful, but I’ve got to be honest with you I think the situation at the moment is very tricky,’ the PM told reporters at a London hospital this morning.
‘We will do our level best, but I would just say to everybody: be in good cheer, there are great options ahead for our country on any view.
‘But the key thing is on January 1, whatever happens, there is going to be change.
‘We will see where we get to in the course of the next two days, but I think the UK Government’s position is that we are willing to engage at any level, political or otherwise, we are willing to try anything.
‘But there are just limits beyond which no sensible, independent government or country could go and people have got to understand that.’
Mr Johnson wants a Canadian-style free trade agreement with the EU, but if he fails to get that deal the UK will trade in the same way Australia does. There will be no deal and tariffs will be imposed.
But the PM said he is prepared to keep trying for a deal right up until the wire.
‘Whatever kind of deal we get, whether it’s going to be like Australia or like Canada, there is going to be change, and businesses and people need to get ready for that change,’ he added.
‘We are always hopeful but there may come a moment when we have to acknowledge that it is time to draw stumps, and that is just the way it is.
‘We will prosper mightily, as I have always said, under any version, and if we have to go for an Australian solution then that’s fine too.’
The Office for Budget Responsibility suggests a no-deal situation could wipe 2% off the gross domestic product, a measure of the size of the economy, in 2021.
This is on top of the country struggling due to the impact of the coronavirus pandemic this year.
In a message to Brussels, the Prime Minister said: ‘Our friends have just got to understand the UK has left the EU in order to be able to exercise democratic control over the way we do things.
‘There is also the issue of fisheries where we are a long way apart still.
‘But hope springs eternal, I will do my best to sort it out if we can.’
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