To kick the can down the road a little further

It has been reported that the UK is to further extend the grace period for introducing checks into NI from Britain.

It has been suggested that this is after discussions with the EU.

We shall see.

As it stands, one of the external borders of the EU MS and CU is in the Irish Sea, and the EU is, perhaps foolishly, agreed to left the UK Government policy it.

If it comes down to a decision, the EU will not compromise on an external border, as that could put internal borders up.

Let's see what happens when the announcement or announcements are made later this week.

It is worth noting that elections to the NI Assembly are in May next year, it would not be unexpected to see the grace period extend to then.

As ever, a reminder that the NIP is not about managing alignment, its about managing divergance. If there is no divergance and there is a robust agreement, then checks and paperwork can be removed.

But the whole point of Brexit was divergance.

So, where this ends up is anyone's guess.

As it stands, the country's fucked and there is nothing I or pretty much anyone can do about it. THe damage has been done, and most of it is irreversable.

Repeating every day until I die "I told you so", or, "what did you think was going to happen" isn't really an option, but I might get it tattoed on my forehead.

All of this Brext chaos, coinciding with COVID was avoidable, but the Government chose to deal with them both at the same time. The transition could have been extended to the end of 2021 without agreement of the EU, if the UK had acted by the end of JUly last year.

Johnson and Frost chose not to.

So we are here.

Fucked.

Fucking fucked, to quote JCC.