Talking Brexit

On Monday I was talking to two colleagues, who I thought were quite intelligent, until we began talking about Brexit.

They shared the same view with some of Fleet Street and the Three Brixiteers who have been given the task of steering the good ship SS Great Britain through the icebergs of doubt and trade negotiations to the sunny uplands of a post-Brexit world.

Only their arguments settled on the "we're Britain, we're too big to not do deals with, it'll be a roaring success." And nothing was going to change their mind. In fact when I laughed in their faces, they got quite angry and demanded the subject be changed.

And that, in a nutshell, is the problem. Not seeing the multitude, the legion of issues that would need to be overcome before we could even start negotiating with other countries regarding a new trade deal.

A couple of weeks ago, lawyers for the Government made their arguments for not referring triggering article 50 secret, only known to the lawyers of those challenging it. Even us who backed the case were not told. On Tuesday, an appeal succeeded in revealing the who document. And it turns out that the Government believes the who question of triggering article 50 is so complicated that only Ministers who have the knowledge of these issues could deal with t, not both Houses of Parliament.

Which is, clearly, a pile of dingo's kidneys, as all three of the MInisters all have mad statements in the past two weeks that Number 10 have had to correct all of them. And even today, Liam Fox, the disgraced former Defence Secretary, now Minister for Trade Negotiations, or something, made a speech in which he failed to realise the treaties we have with South Korea today would become null and void once we left the EU.

Boris this week backed Turkey's bid to join the EU, despite being behind the Leave campaign which warned of a Turkish entry into the EU would unleash a wave of Scary Muslims and brown people. This hypocrisy was ignored by even the BBC.

Brexit still means Brexit, and the Government says it will make a success of it, but all discussions on it will remain secret, mostly from Parliament. Taking back control, right there.