We are sinking into the cloying morass of Brexit. There is real blue on blue anger on the government benches with remainers and ultra Brexiteers throwing insults at each other. The government was defeated yesterday on one amendment by four votes (HERE) and saved another by six votes, but only after four Labour MPs defied the whip and voted with the Tories. Nicholas Soames MP, grandson of Winston Churchill, says the whole thing (Brexit) should be blown up and we should start again. There is a sense of crisis in the air and Westminster correspondents talk about an unprecedented event one day only for it to be forgotten the next as an even more unprecedented event arrives.
BoJo is set to give what is being described as a dramatic resignation speech in The House this afternoon (HERE) which you can be sure will be full of puffed up rhetoric but with zero in the way of solutions to the mess he has steered us into.
David Davis (Remember him? He used to be Secretary of State at DEXEU but resigned after being miffed by the cabinet actually agreeing a plan!) is now saying the PM cannot make any more concessions to the EU. Although he doesn't like the Chequers plan he says she must stick to it (no I couldn't quite follow that either) - or else. I am sure the EU would regard the white paper as a starting point not an ultimatum. The PM will have to compromise because central planks of the policy are totally unacceptable to the EU. And in an interview, he is still speaking as if no deal actually means a "bare bones deal" to keep some things going. In other words after walking away he thinks the EU will run after us and offer us a minimalist deal to keep essential things moving. This is just not realistic.
The EU are not going to do this, regardless of the cost to them.
The whole thing has the feel of 1914. Lloyd George described the outbreak of war in 1914 as a "tragic accident". No European power wanted conflict, but governments had ended up "backing over the precipice" into war. The difference now of course is we aren't reversing over the cliff but driving at top speed towards it, with half of the passengers laughing.
In 1914, there was a lot of miscalculation and misunderstanding of each sides position and the final result was a catastrophe. History is repeating itself, make no mistake. I do not for one second suggest we are marching to war but the economic and political cost will be very high and the ill feeling, on both sides, will take years to change.
