Two years, two weeks two days

I can remember, back in the heady days of 2016 when I wrote a comment from DAG that the last part of Brexit the UK would be in control of, was when we (as a country) submitted the A50 notification.

It comes with no satisfaction to say that this has been proved right, At every turn, the UK has had to bend to the EU's position, on occasion trying to make a defeat sound like a victory. And the one other constant has been the total failure of the Brexiteers promises to be lived up to.

From "this will be the easiest of negotiations in history", to " there will be no downsides to Brexit, only considerable upsides". And so on.

Any hint that remoaners might try to help with suggestions on how to do things differently, so to cause less friction, were met with accusations that we were talking Britain down. And that the "people" had had enough of experts.

We now have a new Brexit Minister and he is repeating the same mistakes, a mistake of playing to a domestic or Conservative audience rather than one meant for our European friends. And so the erosion of trust on anything that May or Raab might now say.

A group of Ministers are touring the EU this week, trying to drum up support for its white paper that the cabinet has only accepted after mass resignations.

And that paper contains much of what has already been rejected by the EU, so rather than constantly argue among themselves, and if only May and the Brexiteers had spent as much energy engaging with the EU, then things might have ended up differently.

There is a train of thought that says 80% of the Withdrawal Agreement (WA) has been agreed, and it is just the rest that needs to be settled. THat as may be, but the ERG headbangers are keen to have as hard Brexit as they can, because without that, the Transition Agreement (TA) could go on forever, and anyway, in 50 years time the UK will be back in the EU.

If we ask nicely.

So where the UK ends up depends on how the Conservative party holds up, whether May can cling on to power, of there is a coup by the ERG. Or there is an election and Comrade Corbyn is PM. Don't get me wrong, I am a socialist, but also a realist. Corbyn is a big a fan of Brexit as DD or any Tory headbangers. Until there is change on Labour there can be no real opposition to it.