The penny is dropping

Today, DD appeared before the oversight committee, and although they went gentle on him, it became clear DD really is not so much a nam out of his depth, but a man drowned, his body recovered and an autopsy about to be carried out.

DD announced that UK will be coming up with its own draft text of the December Fallback position, aka option 3. All well and good, but the EU published theirs in March, and anyway, he's had, what, 4 months to get this job done? In fairness, in order for the draft text to be published, that would require the cabinet to agree that same text, and as they can barely agree on the time, that happening is slim. So, when you don't know where you're going in negotiations, the other side decide your destination.

His failure to answer questions, or contradict statements, on subject that the PM and other Ministers had made that morning. Either he's crap, poorly briefed or the rest of cabinet bypassing him.

He did admit that the A50 bill passed by Parliament last year, could be amended to cover the event that Parliament reject the "deal" that DD gets from the EU, either extending the A50 notice or having a 2nd referendum. He didn't rule anything out.

That meant that the MP for the 1780s, JRM started making threats to the PM, using coarse language to describe her plan for a customs "agreement", and threatening to apparently burn the House of Lords down if they contnue to thwart the will of the people. JRM is now backed by Naught Nigel to be PM, which says it all, really.

DD still believes there is a technological solution to the NI/Irish border, this was thrown into further doubt when it emerged that the new App created for the Windrush victims only works on Android phones, not Apple. Just be glad I suppose that it works only on Betamax really. And bear in mind that the UK has to create a computer system to handle hundreds of thousands of customs declarations, VAT declarations a day, at multiple locations, train thousands of users and be up and working by the end of the year. And the last major public sector IT project, for the NHS, is a decade late and billions of pounds over budget.

All these are foreseeable problems, and could be avoided if the A50 notification was sent when the UK was ready, i.e. never, but there you have it.

DD suggested that the NI/Irish border might not be fixed until October, which the EU announced was too late and restated that it must be sorted out by the end of June. So, no time to waste, and remember, UK decided to leave and so should have thought of all this shit.

Also this week, the Government has lost a series of votes on the Withdrawal bill in the House of Lords, the upper House doing their job in scrutinising what the Government is doing, and what the Commons should have done, but failed. The latest one is very much tightening up the possible use of the so-called Henry VIII powers by Ministers, now there will have to be a very good reason for them to use such powers.

It is also possible that May might not survive the Windrush scandal, the current Home Secretary, Amber Rudd is not covering herself in glory with answers today showing she either fails to notice deportation targets all over the Home Office notice boards, but as the responsible Minister she should know not just the targets but the actual policy itself. The head civil servant of her department knew of the policy and the target, which is spit into regions, but the national target is just over 8,300 a year. A target suggests a strategic direction, which as Minister Rudd, and May before her, were responsible.

Were May to fall, it is likely that the Government would fall too, and so there would be an election.

The Government also might fall as the DUP has said that if NI were to be treated differently from the rest of Britain, they would vote against the Government.

It is a mess, and it's all coming together for an almighty crash in the summer.