Saturday Brexit

The PM spent Saturday in Germany, mansplaining to Europe how important a security deal would be for the EU to reach with the UK. Would all be very good, not playing politics with people's lives and all that, had May herslef not threatened to withdraw such cooperation in security in the early days of Brexit back in 2016.

So, security cooperation, another unintended or intended victim or consequence of Brexit.

I spent nearly an hour waiting at the Eastern Docks in Dover yesterday, watching traffic and truck in particular arriving. I am guessing there was about one every 5 seconds arriving. All with paperwork in order, just going to the right lane, checking in and then driving round to wait to board the ferry. Imagine if anything were to slow down, or complicate this process. If it takes 30 seconds to check each truck's paperwork, then probably will be OK. 2 minutes, then there will be problems. Ten minutes? 30 minutes? If the trucks at the front of the queue of Operation Stack are not processed quicker than those joining the back, the the queue will get longer and longer.

Trade bodies expect 20 mile queue to the normal without a deal, or in the event of Britain not being in the SM or CU. With the prospect of the queue getting ever longer.

Oh, deep joy. And if at the end of this, Britain were to be better off, stronger more together, then, fine. But the opposite will happen; poorer, weaker, less influential, bitter, shrunken.

Britain, through the Cabinet and PM, does not know what it wants from brexit, and time is running out. The clock has been running ten and a half months, and we are no further forward. The EU said the transition deal is not a given, in which case a no deal Brexit could be thirteen and a half months away; there is no infrastructure in place, no staff, no computer systems, no parking areas for truck. Nothing that a country about to crash out of the worlds largest free trade area, in the name of free trade, laughingly, would need to be able to trade, arrangel commercial flights, fight international crime or terrorism, obtain nuclear isotopes for medial research or cancer treatment. These and hundreds of other things all need to be in place, or fall back agreements in under 98000 hours.

That is the Brexit reality.

And the DUP caused the talks about restoring shared Governance in Northern Ireland to collapse this week. That's the DUP who are in a support deal for the PM and the Conservative Government, the only party to vote against the Good Friday Agreement, and now Tories openly saying that the GFA is dead int he water. What dangerous times we are living in, and the fact the Brexiteers failed to take into account the politics and needs of a part of the Union. And still don't see that the devolved Government or lack of it, is linked to Brexit and the border.

Ireland, the island, will make or break Brexit. And will break the careers of many Brexiteers. It needs to be settled before the next phase of talks can be concluded, and any time left talk about talks about trade.