Assessing the impact of the impact assessments

I could go into great and lengthy details about how David Davis and his department at first claimed that the 58 (more or less) impact assessments on 85% (or more) of the UK economy, and how they were being compiled and then completed. At every turn he said they would be complete for the A50 notification was sent. Do we take him for an idiot, seemed to be his thought process here.

Then as the summer turned to autumn, it turned out that no one had really read the assessments, nor even the summaries. And every attempt by Parliament to get access to them was denied.

At the beginning of this month, someone came up with a brilliant and ancient and long forgotten Parliamentary Procedure that could not be ignored, forcing DD to release the assessments. Only they did not exist in the form the honourable members requested, it was claimed.

So, we have 58 impact assessments that went into great detail that did and did not exist. And yesterday the Department for Exiting the EU had to hand over what they had. All of it. 850 pages in two box files, and that was it.

Parliament was not impressed, and it is possible that the Government, or DD at least, is in contempt of Parliament and the instruction was not complied with, much was redacted or left out.

There are possibilities; that the assessments were so bad they releasing them would be embarrassing and would potentially force Parliament to instruct the Government to stop. or try to. Or worse, that the assessments never really existed and DD and the Government were winging it.

DD did not have the guts to attend the Commons himself to explain the situation, which did not help matters. In the past, being found in contempt of Parliament would mean being taken to a cell under Big Ben. The thought of seeing DD being carted off in chains is a pleasant one, but probably will not happen.

The Government might ask for a new motion to be raised, but as this one was not complied with, and as the Government has decided not to challenge and motion in the House it might lose, it did not challenge this, so really has no procedural or legal leg to stand on.

Of course the argument being trotted out is revealing too much might be leaked and used by the EU. That the SU knows about the UK economy and knows how much we would lose by leaving, is laughable, and yet many Brexiteers and newspapers use the poker analogy. Don't let the other side see your cards. But they can see our cards, this is foolish. As all through the Brexit process, the aim has been to keep Parliament and the electorate in the dark about the effect it would have. Why bother with the truth when it is all sunlit uplands and having cake and eating it.

Next month the Government finds out how difficult things can be when a "small" country, Ireland, has the backing of 26 others and will not budge on allowing talks to progress onto trade. This is what the EU is about, strength in numbers and staying together as a group. And Brexit is the cause that now unites Europe, and it is a lesson that May and DD have yet to accept. Forcing Brexit on a once divided and partially united island, forcing it apart, building a border between the two halves because no one realised the cause and effect of what they were proposing. Even now, Ireland is blamed rather than accepting the truth that either NI stays in at least the SM or there has to be a hard border. Not out of petty spite or punishment, but because its the way the WTO operates.

The next few days is going to be very interesting. As the whole process has been.