Brexit update

It is hard to keep up with what is happening regarding Brexit. You fail to write one day and then another fresh day's hell arrives.

There seems to be a sense among Brexiteers that unless tangible denefits are allocated to Brexit, support for it will further ebb away.

Finding benefits in a policy that makes most of the country poorer, pays more tax, has poorer services, less choice in shops, galloping inflation and so on and on was always going to be difficult.

So a paper was published which is 90% about asperations of future benefits. Thing is, if run correclty, these would have been done before triggering A50, so failing to plan has again meant planning to fail.

Brexiteers in the right wing press are demanding more divergance.

Thing is, of course, divergance for the sake of political dogma is never going to go well. The example easiest to use is REACh, the EU chemical safety regulations, that the UK helped to write. It is already the "gold standard", in replicating it would be not only pointless but expensive for thse businesses that operate in Britain and export to the EU, compliance with both needs to be verified.

And the UK isn't a big enough market to lead other countries and regions into a new regualtory regime, not when there is the EU, US and China, as we're not going to get them to change. Especially now without the EU's size behind us, we are a middling country shouting into the void.

Any friends we might have had in this, we are losing or have lost due to the way in which the UK has tried to row back or break its Treaty commitments in regard to the WA, the NIP and TCA.

Pointless extra red tape, exactly the opposite that was promised by the boneheaded Brexiteers at Vote Leave.

And now the DUP Agriculture Minister in the Northern Ireland Assembly has ordered all compliance checks to stop on goods entering NI from Britain. The UK Government backing Mr Poots saying its a evolved matter, but when the Scottish Government tried to impose its own rules the UK Government litigated aganst them to make them stop. So it can't be right for NI and wrong for Scotland. Ms Sturgeon is watching closely.

The NI First Minister is going to resign this afternoon, collapsing the power sharing agreement, thus forcing Direct Rule by the UK Government, making them responsible now for the checks.

Brexit is truly the gift that keeps giving.

So it will be the Civil Service Head of the Union who will then be responsible for such checks, and that person is, checks notes, oh, Sue Gray.

You really could not make this up.