Is there a worse way of demonstrating good faith than by a report like this HERE in The Telegraph claiming an aide has told cabinet ministers that the deal agreed on Friday is not binding and the phrase "full regulatory alignment" is meaningless? I am not sure there is. The Irish and the EU will no doubt come back to this issue.
I assume if the EU publicly rejected moving on to trade talks there would be uproar but if we suggest the agreement is meaningless, it's all OK.
But more than that, the article has BoJo claiming that ‘full alignment’ means compatibility with taking back control of our money, laws and borders.” which is an amazing contradiction.
And another unnamed Eurosceptic is quoted saying, "The Remain side are trying to say alignment suggests we are heading towards a soft Brexit. But No 10 have signed up to an article saying that we are free to diverge at the end of the transition period,”
But looking at the joint report the word diverge does not appear once and transition only appears four times, none in the context of allowing us to diverge from full alignment.
Someone else claims regulatory alignment doesn't mean anything in EU law but Gisela Stuart thinks it does (HERE) particularly in connection with the Ukrainian association agreement.
So, not only is there the obvious contradiction about the Irish border anyway but more contradictions are introduced and like Humpty Dumpty, words begin to mean whatever anyone wants them to mean. Full alignment "now or in the future" means divergence apparently.
This is not the way to build trust.
I thought the provisional wing of Brexit was strangely quiet. Simon Heffer, a sort of unofficial rent-a-gob for Bernard Jenkins and other advocates of the hardest possible Brexit claims (HERE) they have greeted the deal smiling through gritted teeth. They are apparently very angry and ready to try and depose May. This is actually why the deal is conveniently meaningless.
