A quick Brexit round up

If you want to have the summary them, nothing has really changed other than another two and a half weeks has been pissed up the wall by May and Raab, and we are no further forward.

I stayed off Twitter for the holiday, so had to watch Brexit through the BBC, but knowing what was being said was rubbish or lies and the BBC failed time and time to point these out shows just how e got into this mess.

DD now wants to be Prime Minister, and there seems to be the possibility of a coup by some on the COnservative Party this week. That no matter who is PM will change the position, maybe only by making it worse if Boris, DD or JRM are leaders, then you see very quickly this for the side show that it is.

As Europe carries on ripping the Conservative Party apart as it has done since the late 80s, and will do no matter what happens in the next few months, the whole exercise is pretty pointless. DD wanting to be PM in order to deliver a proper Brexit, whatever that is, when for over two years he was literally the Minister for Brexit leading the negotiations with the EU. It would be funny were not so tragic.

MPs and Ministers carry on claiming that black is white; that there is no border between Switzerland and the EU, despite that there is, that there are hundreds, thousands of pictures on the web of the miles of queuing lorries at the border. There is no boarder for private cars, as the Swizz are in the single travel area. I spoke to a German lady, now living in Switzerland, about Brexit and the Swiss border. Her job is to arrange freight across that very border. Why are UK politicians not called out for lying about this, she asked? Why indeed.

As ever, there are simple ways to avoid a hard border in Ireland. Yes, that again. But these simple solutions involve single markets, customs unions and tax equivalence. Or the ability to know how much tax to levy on good coming in. Without these, there has to be a hard border. No amount of technological solutions will ever replace simple WTO rules and the status of third countries,, which the UK will come in relation to the EU when it leaves.

These are simple concepts, which even I have grasped, so knowing these things I can demolish and Brexiteer argument on cross border trade, shame then BBC journalists seem unable to.

If anything, remain is in worse shape than leave, in that there is a growing demand for a 2nd referendum, 3rd if you count the 1975 one, with a march in London yesterday which attracted over half a million participants. A second referendum cannot be an affront to democracy, nor should should the people's voice be silenced by a previous people's voice, and I believe the only way that Brexit could be stopped is a second referendum. But a win for remain is not guaranteed, the Government of the day would set the question and the rules as set out in the primary and secondary legislation. But we know from the 2016 one that the clear labeling of it as an "advisory" referendum, and Parliament not needing to act on the result, and look where that got us.

Worse than that, none of the Labour front bench took part in the march yesterday, meaning that even if there were a change in Government there wouldn't be a change in Brexit policy.

Brexit will be decided by the Irish border, as it was always going to be, and any movement will be by the UK. We are now at the point where fudging an issue is no longer possible, only clarity will win through, and legal clarity at that, fudging the meaning of the December agreement meant that all was well until what had been agreed, or what the EU said had been agreed, was written in legal clarity, that it all fell down. Which is why I can't see there being any fudging of the border now to be kicked into the long grass of the trade negotiations, no matter how long the TA is.