Brexit: Crunch Time Coming

The inevitable day of reckoning is coming. A combination of a split Tory party facing diametrically opposed positions plus the ultra unionist DUP which makes, under Arlene Foster, an industry out of blocking coherent government, which is why NI power sharing has stopped, means that the UK’s official position  on Brexit is a fantasy assembled by fools.

It is now clear, as it has been from the very beginning, that the government has absolutely no idea how to bridge the gaps and unite the opposites in its negotiations with the EU. It started off on the unjustified assumption that the EU would regard trading with the UK as a must which took priority over everything. In fact the EU regards Brexit as idiotic and plainly against the UK’s national interest, trade as a sub issue, but the integrity of the Customs Union, the Single Market, the various Treaties and all the various legal frameworks and protocols which make the EU a political achievement unique in history, as a political fundamental. There will be no compromise and in any event it would be impossible to get agreement for such a thing from all 27 of the member states. So two years out from the referendum and we still have no idea. There are two options.

One is over the cliff to a hard Brexit. The result of that would be economically so disadvantageous to the UK that once the effects were felt the political owners of the project, the Tories and DUP, will be set upon by the electorate and wiped out. The UK will then re-join the EU. This is all very unlikely as there is no chance that hard Brexit would get through parliament where Remainers and Soft Brexiteers have a substantial majority in both Houses.

The second option is, as has been said over and over, we remain in the customs union and close to the single market and accept the rules regulations and jurisdictions that such an association requires, without any say in what they are. Soon the UK would tire of being an EU protectorate and would rejoin as a full Member.

So all roads end up at the same destination.

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