To add to the febrile, toxic atmosphere at Westminster, David Davis is this morning calling for a cabinet rebellion in an article for The Sunday Times which the BBC report (HERE). It follows the Mail on Sunday last night claiming a deal was about to be concluded today (HERE) and approved by the government tomorrow. Panic has set in all round. The DUP are up in arms and Brexiteers like Davis are calling for cabinet insurrection.
What we are seeing is the result of the insane decision in 2015 by Dominic Cummings, Campaign Director at Vote Leave, not to have a plan for leaving because, "creating an exit plan which makes sense and which all reasonable people could unite around seems an insuperable task" (HERE). This has since been exacerbated by the PM in March 2017 triggering Article 50 before a plan or even a destination had been agreed. Just how insuperable a task it was is now becoming clear.
The BBC are reporting that the Brexiteers fear we will be unable to strike trade deals if we are to remain semi-permanent members of the EU's customs union. Trade deals were only touched upon as a peripheral issue during the campaign and experts predict they will have only a very marginal impact on our economy and won't offset the enormous damage done by Brexit anyway. And any small improvement will be a long time coming. Yet now it has become such an imminent and vital issue that any delay becomes a cause célèbre with people dying in a ditch. Madness isn't it?
The position we find ourselves in was entirely predictable. There is no majority for any given plan or exit strategy as I wrote last December (HERE). This is true across the country, in parliament and in the cabinet. Whoever is behind the wheel will always have a cacophony of voices shouting that we're headed in the wrong direction and this would be true if it was Rees-Mogg, BoJo Davis or Corbyn or Starmer.
Nobody can find a way through that will satisfy a majority - and they never will.
A deal will still be done this week, of that I'm certain. But absolutely no one will be happy and probably not even the negotiators themselves.
