Mid-week Brexit

There are many ways to look at Brexit, and the unfolding disaster that it will be.

Listening to Parliament discussing it, to the layperson at home one would think it was some abstract concept, or something like discussing new packaging for cigarettes rather than a process that has the possibility of wrecking most people's lives for decades. Take the discussion regarding Monday's budget; no one knows with any certainty how badly any flavour of Brexit will make the country and economy poorer, we don't know how much. But the Chancellor gave tax cuts and breaks, mostly to the richer parts of society, but increased public sector spending, which he heralded as being the end of austerity.

But the Government's own figures show that even with a WA, TA and final agreement on trade, we will be something like 8% poorer, and without 16% poorer. And yet spending was increased, and there was the promise of jam tomorrow, irrespective of how bad Brexit might be. In fact he said the word "brexit" just once in his speech.

One would have hoped for some scrutiny from the Opposition, but they support the tax cuts and are mainly for Brexit, at least the front bench is.

I see the people on Twitter from whose tweets I base these posts on, pulling their hair out at the madness of it, business leaders screaming how mad it all is and how Ministers know nothing, but the press carry on their cheerleading.

A Belgian Minister said today, that in the event of there being a WA and TA, and things went badly, UK could rejoin in as little as 18 months as we would already be aligned. This is the first crumb of comfort I have heard from the EU side, and not sure if it would be in compliance with EU law. The EU is at the end of a day, a political beast and sometimes those solutions will work regardless.

But back home, Brexiteers just don't get that not only must the WA be ratified by Parliament, but by each of the EU27 too, and the EU Parliament, and failure of ratification would mean that both would fail, in particular if time ran out and 23:00 on 23rd March 2019 came and went.

It seems increasingly probable that May cannot get any WA though her current Cabinet. If she did she would then have to get her party to back it, and Westminster to ratify it. The EU thought it best to set aside 6 mnths from the two year A50 period for notification, UK has already burned through a month of that, and it seems both sides are no nearer agreement on the WA. Raab and Barnier have not met this week because Raab has been in Westmister for the Budget debates, and so another week slips by, and we are seven days nearer the cliff edge.