The atmosphere is becoming febrile as we get into the business end of the Article 50 negotiations. Barnier hinted that the EU are prepared to offer the UK an "unprecedented" deal and the pound "surged" on the exchanges, quickly reaching a three week high - creeping over $1.30. But as Gary Gibbon at Channel 4 pointed out, Barnier has said exactly the same thing several times already. They are not offering cherry picked access to the single market but a CETA style free trade deal with a bit of security cooperation thrown in.
I think this tells us a few things. Firstly, the financial markets don't really follow the details and operate on a sort of mass hysteria and herd mentality basis. In fact if I Google "Pound surges on hopes of Brexit deal", I get any number of hits at all sorts of different dates going back to late 2016! Try it yourself.
Secondly, it tells us the way the markets see a no deal Brexit. On yesterday's hint there might be a deal, the pound rose 1% against the euro. Last week when no deal appeared more likely the pound fell.
It's obvious the markets do not see a no deal Brexit (or indeed any Brexit) in the same way as Rees-Mogg, as an unalloyed triumph for the British economy. If they did, the pound would be doing the exact opposite, but it isn't.
The markets were additionally buoyed yesterday when Dominic Raab gave an upbeat assessment of the negotiations to the Lords' Brexit Select Committee yesterday telling them the negotiations are 80% complete (as they have been for months, the record is stuck) and he is hopeful of reaching an agreement, but maybe not by October. He admitted he doesn't yet have a "solution" for Northern Ireland (HERE).
In Raab's speech last week (HERE) launching the first technical notices on no deal, this is what came out of the Brexit Secretary's mouth:
That's 7000 of the brightest minds in Whitehall at the moment and all he can tell us is that they haven't found a solution to the NI problem yet! Oh dear, I do hope they manage to find one - after all it doesn't actually need a solution, at the moment it isn't even a problem.
But to look at it another way, imagine 10,000 goats trying to ride unicycles while memorising the complete works of Proust written in Arabic and this will give you some idea just how difficult the self inflicted NI problem is. And it's just one of many.
Soon the entire nation will be recruited into government and thinking deeply about some aspect or other of Brexit as the search for "solutions" to all the myriad "problems" that we haven't got at the moment goes on.
"There are more than 7,000 people working on Brexit. There is funding for an extra 9,000 staff to be recruited into the civil service, enabling us to accelerate government preparations as and when we need to.
"And obviously just as important at that, in relation to frontline services, such as the UK’s Border Force, we are currently recruiting an extra 300 staff in time for our exit, with plans in the pipeline to recruit 1,000 more staff, so they are ready to deal with any increase in work".
But to look at it another way, imagine 10,000 goats trying to ride unicycles while memorising the complete works of Proust written in Arabic and this will give you some idea just how difficult the self inflicted NI problem is. And it's just one of many.
Soon the entire nation will be recruited into government and thinking deeply about some aspect or other of Brexit as the search for "solutions" to all the myriad "problems" that we haven't got at the moment goes on.
