Downing Street have hit back at Johnson's criticism of the Chequers plan telling journalists that BoJo offered no new ideas (HERE) in his Telegraph article, which is true as I noted yesterday (HERE). Justine Greening, another MP and former minister, a remainer, has also joined the fray and said Chequers is dead and needs to be chucked (HERE).
She says May's plan is more unpopular with voters than the poll tax and that we are going round in circles. Her solution is to spend yet more time on the merry-go-round, doing yet more turns of all the same circles we've spent the last two years going round. Barnier at the weekend said we didn't need more time we needed political decisions and how true that is.
We are in an utterly bizarre position. It took two years from the referendum and sixteen months from triggering Article 50 for the government to agree on a plan, the Chequers plan. At the time it was seen as a triumph for May, but as time goes on it's quite clear it is unworkable as well as unacceptable to both leavers and remainers as well as the EU. Greening is suggesting we go back to the drawing board! There are just seven months of the ticking Brexit time bomb before we're out and two months before a legal treaty needs to be ready and the talk is of starting again! Stunning.
What are the options? For all the talk on both sides no deal is out of the question. It would represent political failure of an extraordinary kind and plunge this country into chaos for months as the LSE make clear with an update to their report: Cost Of No Deal Revisited (HERE). And the pound is beginning to sink as poor economic news (HERE) shows manufacturing slowing to a 25 month low.
I am convinced that no deal is just as "unworkable" as the Chequers proposal, and even Brexiteer ministers must realise this, at least some of them, even if they won't admit it publicly. The no deal mantra is a negotiating ploy not a realistic option.
Despite the pleas from BoJo and Greening there is not the slightest sign of either side (I'm talking of leavers and remainers here) coalescing around some mythical middle way, a compromise plan that both sides will find acceptable. I do not believe any such plan exists or could ever be found. You are either in the single market and the customs union with all the benefits and all the disadvantages that that involves, or you are out of both, again with all the benefits and disadvantages. What the Brexiteers did is convince a gullible majority that we could be half in and half out, getting the benefits of both with none of the disadvantages. This was never a realistic proposition, although it's one Theresa May has been pursuing for well over a year.
As the last few months of 2018 tick down we must finally confront the question square on. And since the politicians didn't make the first catastrophic decision and can't reach a compromise on what do to next, the only solution will be another vote or a general election. The "political decision" that Barnier says is needed must be made by the people. But for a GE to solve the crisis the Labour party must go into it with a clear position of being inside the SM and the CU, otherwise we'll simply be back in the same ridiculous position.
