FOR months now the Government has been softening us up for the prospect of Britain leaving the European Union without a new free trade deal in place.

David Davis, the Brexit secretary, first raised the prospect in September and Theresa May has said no deal would be better than a bad deal.

That is self-evidently true, but isn’t it the Government’s job to cut the best deal it can with Britain’s soon-to-be erstwhile European partners?

Instead, ministers seem resigned to leaving the free trade area on World Trade Organisation terms.

That would leave UK exporters at the mercy of the EU’s common customs tariffs, pushing up the price of British goods and making them less attractive to EU consumers.

Trading under WTO rules would have a major impact on several important UK industries including car manufacturing, clothing and machinery. In a grim irony, the areas most in favour of Brexit are likely to be the hardest hit, including here in the North-East.

Tit-for-tat tariffs – a policy favoured by hard Brexiteers – would make life even more miserable for UK consumers by pushing up the price of imports, already rising due to a weak pound, still further.

Meanwhile, as Britain hurtles towards a hard Brexit, many prominent Remainers seem to be in denial.

It’s time they reconciled themselves to the fact that they lost. There will be no referendum re-run.

We still believe there is a positive role for Remainers to play after Mrs May triggers Article 50: set aside their doubts and join the negotiations.

Britain’s team could do with a few more friendly faces when they sit across the table from Guy Verhofstadt and his EU negotiators.