This article by Asa Bennet in The Telegraph (HERE) is of the 'fog in Channel, continent cut off' variety. One wonders what Mr Bennett reads to think the way he does. The Eurozone is growing strongly at a rate about twice that of the UK, unemployment is tumbling and the pound is sinking like a stone against the Euro. Support for the EU is growing in virtually every EU country following the Brexit vote. The negotiations are going badly, so much so that alongside his article is another one (HERE) where we are pleading to get continuous negotiating started as if we are panicking about the amount of time we have left as the cliff edge comes into sight.
The negotiations are the ones that Peter Lilley (HERE) claimed would "end with zero tariffs and minimal changes to our rules. Zero tariffs to zero tariffs cannot take more than 10 minutes to agree and unchanged rules not much longer. Neither need any conceivable transition". With eighteen months to go it is surprising that the government thinks we might be unable to find ten minutes to agree an FTA. When Peter Lilley gets back from Cloud Cuckoo land I'll ask him.
But none of this matters to Bennet. To him we are still in the casino piling money into the pot and looking confidently at the pair of deuces in front of us. On the other side, our opponent M Barnier, can hardly believe his luck. He is trying hard to stay calm and keeps checking to see if the four aces in his hands are really there. I wonder who is going to get the lesson? Probably both, but quite different ones.
Tim Stanley (HERE) has an article, also in The Telegraph, in more or less the same vein. He says we are testing leavers' patience but the comments reveal a surprising lack of unanimity. Many Telegraph readers are obviously not foam-at-the-mouth leavers and think the article is just biased propaganda.
A car crash is coming and leavers are the only ones who will be suprised.
