@mike German imports are dominated by cars. Yes we could easily handle buying less new cars from Germany and Fance. Japanese make fine cars and have a bigblead in Hybrid Technology.
Great – we get to pay more for cars that aren’t as good. Ditto pretty much anything else.
Personally I am fine with trading under WTO rules and an immediate Article 50
Great – everything imported will cost more, all our exports will cost more. Sounds brilliant.
As for the Article 50 process it wouod be no surprise if the cards where stacked towards the EU. One important place where they have the weaker hand is timing, its up to us to decide.
The cards are so stacked towards the EU it doesn’t matter that we have one Joker. We can have lots of in-principle support for whatever unrealistic deal we think we’ll get when we enact A50, only for it to be reneged upon once the clock is ticking. At best, we have a pair of twos.
Where this is hugely beneficial is we could tactically trigger article 50 at the moment when the Greek / eurozone debt crises reaches the end game. I doubt we would do that as could well be terminal for the whole EU, but its an option albeit a nuclear one
As primary school teachers often say (and that seems to be a tier above the level of intellect we appear to be dealing with here): It’s your own time you’re wasting. We play the card, they take 18 months to getting round to dealing with it because they’re trying to fix a bigger mess, we have six months to negotiate.
Don’t forget that the longer we drag this on for, the more businesses will have given up hope of the UK obtaining something beneficial, and they, their money, and their jobs will be off.