There's rules and then there's rules

The one remaining argument for the headbangers and Brexiteers is that at least the are the WTO rules to fall back on if all else fails.

Only, no other country trades on these alone as the tariffs outside a trade agreement are onerous. That and the dispute resolution is slow and the losing country can ignore it, and frequently does. And anyway, the US under Trump is trying to undermine this anyway.

If there is a dispute under the WTO, then a complaint is filed, and action is painfully slow, sometimes taking several years, and even if the UK were to win, the other country could ignore the verdict, and would have to implement any ruling into their domestic law before it came into force. In trade the larger the country or block gets what they want due to the potential losses on the smaller country side.

And under the threat that Trump has on all international institutions from the WTO to NATO and in his tiny mind that all these give the US a bad deal and therefore must be renegotiated or scrapped, the UK is leaving the world’s largest free trade area to throw our hat in with this shitgibbon. Or that’s what the Brexiteers would have us want to do.

Yesterday, the police warned that Brexit threatens their ability to fight crime, due to information and data sharing restrictions, oh and that international arrest warrants would become impossible. As Brexit means Brexit.

So, there you have it. More chaos, delivered daily to your inbox.