Blinking in the bright light of Brexit

Yesterday, the reality of Brexit was revealed when PM Teresa May made a much trumpeted speech in Florence. Sadly for her, most European leaders turned down invitations, just as she had refused the option of addressing them directly in Brussels last week. The whole next round of Brexit talks had been delayed a week to wait for the speech as it was supposed to be keynote, and game changing. In the end she offered little new or of substance, suggesting that UK might pay £18 billion, which seems to only cover the current round of finance, nothing beyond 2019. There was nothing on EU citizen's rights, and most importantly nothing on the Irish border, and the EU has to feel there has been sufficient progress on all three before parallel talks on trade would be allowed to take part.

Reaction in Europe has been muted, most of which says nothing much has changed, to as long as there is more detail next week when the 4th round of talks start.

If there is deemed not to have been such progress, or any one of the EU27 national parliaments, or the regional parliaments, or the EU Parliament, or the ECJ fail to ratify the deal, then UK leaves the EU on 29th March 2019 without a deal.

May did ask for "something like" a 2 year extension to UK leaving the EU. This has not been received well at home, but generally there has been failure to see that such an extension is not given, the EU could reject it as they see it as just a delaying tactic as UK decides what it wants to transit to. Because at the moment the Cabinet, the Government, The House of Commons, Parliament are all divided on what we want in the end anyway.

All this chaos was predicted of course, but ignored by the Government as it charged on regardless. In fact, it was pointed out that the last part of Brexit that UK would control was the timing of the A50 letter. I mean what bunch of idiots would enter into a process they had no idea of what they wanted at the end, or whether it could be stopped, or how it could be stopped. And then you realise that May is the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson is the Foreign Secretary, Andrea Leadsom is the Leader of the House, Michael Gove is Environmental Secretary and David Davis has been charged with leading the negotiations with the EU. And he is the brains of the operation. Now you see what we are in such a mess.

So we wait to hear from the EU, but already the French President has said there wasn't enough detail, and the Irish PM has said that without clarity on the Irish border, there can be no progress in talks. No progress, no deal, then out on WTO riles, and next time I will cover what those mean. And it aint pretty for Britain.

And finally, Moody's downgraded UK's credit rating further. Once upon a time, maintaining the AAA rating was a manifesto promise for the Conservative Party, now it is something that happened. The Tresury tried to say that the downgrade was based on outdated evidence, but as Moody's waited until after the Florence speech to do the downgrading it doesn't seem likely. Now debt will become ever more expensive for the UK government, and this will increase taxes for us all.