No, because Theresa May could have chosen an entirely different course, which is to say, right at the start, that we want the kind of deal with the European Union that Canada, South Korea and a handful of other countries have managed to secure, which preserves a wide measure of free trade between us, but doesn't involve all the governmental entanglements that actually gave rise to the referendum result, which is the background to our debate. I think what is evident from the speech of the Counsel General today is that, of course, he does not and never has accepted the result of the referendum in June 2016, and it's only in recent times that they've become rather more open and transparent about something that they've always wanted to do, which is to reverse that vote. I mean, everybody has paid lip service to the vote of the majority of the British people two years ago, but they've always wanted either to undermine it so fatally that it was meaningless, or they wanted, explicitly, as they now say, to attempt to reverse it with a second referendum, even before the result of the first referendum has been implemented.

Of course, there is a track record for this throughout the whole of Europe; people have had to keep on voting until they produced the result that the EU deep establishment, in Mr Varoufakis's words, wants. Well, this time, it isn't going to happen, and I regret that we are in this unpalatable situation today, but we're never going to be able to deliver on the result of the referendum on the basis of a policy of taking 'no deal' off the table, because that is actually the strongest weapon that Britain ever had in these negotiations. Because, yes, there will undoubtedly be some convulsions if there is a 'no deal' on 29 March; there will be transitional costs—there's no doubt about that—but, as the European Union will also have very significant costs imposed upon it, this merely proves that the deep political establishment in Brussels has absolutely no interest in the welfare of the people of Europe, let alone the people of the United Kingdom. They do not want a deal, because they want a punishment Brexit to deter others who might choose the same course that Britain did two and a half years ago.

But let's not overestimate the costs that are going to be imposed upon Britain if there is no deal. Yes, exports to the European Union are important; export of goods amounted to £164 billion in an economy of £2 trillion, and the average tariff rate in the EU's common external tariff is 2.5 per cent. It will matter much more for some sectors of the economy, particularly agriculture, than others, but agriculture is less than 2 per cent of the—[Interruption.] I've no time, I'm sorry, no. I've got four and a half minutes; I haven't any time to give way. I'd love to give way, but I can't.

But we are massive net importers of food. There is a massive market within the United Kingdom for British farmers to exploit if there is no deal. The real losers will be foreign farmers: the bacon producers in Denmark, the wine producers in France, the lettuce producers in Spain—not that that's of great concern to me. So, the future of Britain lies outside the European Union, which is a shrinking part of global trade: 30 per cent of world trade in 1980, down to 15 per cent now, and it will be down to 10 per cent in 20 years' time. Let's leave this sclerotic union. Let's have the courage of our convictions and the belief in ourselves as a nation to make a success in the world with the freedoms that leaving the European Union brings.