More than three years after David Cameron announced the start of the Brexit hostilities we are at last beginning to see signs of decisions being forced on us. It has taken the campaign itself, nine months of preparation under Mrs May and two years of tortuous negotiations where she has carefully avoided real decisions, but this week reality has finally entered the fray. The clock has almost ticked down and this morning the government admits the talks are now 'deadlocked,' (HERE).
One would have thought by now everything that could have been said in the negotiations has been said and as Barnier has repeated more than once, we don't need more time, we just need decisions. Decisions that Theresa May has been unable or unwilling to make. The 'bloody difficult woman' has reached the point where something has to give. We have come to the end of procrastination and vacillation. The thin red lines cannot hold any longer.
Are we going to have a close relationship with the EU or a far more distant one? Is Brexit going to be hard or soft? Is it to be party above country? These are questions she has been unable to face up to. This week promises to be the moment when we finally reach a conclusion if not a consensus.
Tomorrow parliament will once more reject her deal, on Wednesday it will reject leaving without a deal and on Thursday it will force Mrs May to sue for a delay - if we can get one. We can then use the time to do what we should have done in July 2016 and find out what the public really want and what parliament will vote for.
Boris Johnson has his usual Monday column in The Telegraph (HERE) where he delivers his all too predictable litany of complaints about the EU. He says, "for much of the past 46 years the EU has treated the political anxieties of the UK government with a condescension that borders on contempt" and runs through how badly the nation with more opt-outs than any other has been treated. He sounds more like a whinger than a putative prime minister. And he is still the journalist used to writing any old rubbish as the copy deadline approached - after three years and with just 18 days to go this is his 'plan':-
"The way ahead is clear. If the EU really will not budge on the backstop – and that has yet to be tested – then for many months I have argued, with many others, that the UK should leave on a different basis. We should come out on time, at the end of this month, but with a mutually agreed standstill in the existing arrangements, so that we can use the period to the end of 2021 (a very long time) to do a proper free-trade deal".
I like the 'has yet to be tested' bit don't you? And as for a 'mutually agreed standstill' this is the transition period for heaven's sake. A transition period that we can't get to without the backstop. And a backstop that he won't vote for.
We should perhaps note that he is not, unlike others in his party, calling for us to exit on WTO terms at the end of the month. Is that progress? I suppose it is. He just might have at last recognised we cannot leave our largest trading partner by far, without a deal - and once you get to that stage our future relationship with the dominant power in Europe becomes crystal clear - as he himself writes in his column:
"They [the EU] will introduce all manner of rules that we may not like. They will forcibly sterilise any signs of growth or innovation of which they disapprove. I am afraid that, in legal terms, they will be our colonial masters, and there will not be a damn thing we can do about any of it".
Johnson has an extraordinary gift for stating and restating the problem, often missing or failing to understand the main point anyway, but going round and round the issue without once offering any practical, workable, acceptable or concrete options for resolving it. He is utterly useless.
But he is readying himself for another shot at No 10 and this week May could easily be forced out or decide to step down anyway. In a month he could be PM - and bad as things are now, they could get a whole lot worse.
Finally, a letter appeared in The Spectator this week (HERE) from none other than the former Chancellor, Nigel Lawson. It had me roaring with laughter. He writes about Article 50, part of the Lisbon treaty since December 2009 and drafted up by Lord Kerr and inserted at the insistence of the UK.
I read Paul Collier’s article in your 23 February issue, which has just reached me in la France profonde, with interest. The principal author of Article 50 was John Kerr, aka Lord Kerr of Kinlochard. I have known John for quite a long time, and enjoyed his company: when I became chancellor in 1983 he was my principal private secretary.
He explained to me some time ago, before the referendum, that the purpose of Article 50 was to make it as difficult as possible for a country to leave the European Union. A clever man, he did a good job.
Nigel Lawson
House of Lords, London SW1
Nobody on the leave side said anything about Article 50, when it was first put into the Treaty of Lisbon or when they first started to push for a referendum. They didn't mention it during the campaign or when the article was triggered. It's only now with a few days to go they notice it makes leaving difficult. I suppose it's like Lawson dismantling his computer and only when it's spread out across the carpet into hundreds of tiny devices and components that he realises it might be difficult to re-assemble.
What a pillock.
Finally, a letter appeared in The Spectator this week (HERE) from none other than the former Chancellor, Nigel Lawson. It had me roaring with laughter. He writes about Article 50, part of the Lisbon treaty since December 2009 and drafted up by Lord Kerr and inserted at the insistence of the UK.
I read Paul Collier’s article in your 23 February issue, which has just reached me in la France profonde, with interest. The principal author of Article 50 was John Kerr, aka Lord Kerr of Kinlochard. I have known John for quite a long time, and enjoyed his company: when I became chancellor in 1983 he was my principal private secretary.
He explained to me some time ago, before the referendum, that the purpose of Article 50 was to make it as difficult as possible for a country to leave the European Union. A clever man, he did a good job.
Nigel Lawson
House of Lords, London SW1
Nobody on the leave side said anything about Article 50, when it was first put into the Treaty of Lisbon or when they first started to push for a referendum. They didn't mention it during the campaign or when the article was triggered. It's only now with a few days to go they notice it makes leaving difficult. I suppose it's like Lawson dismantling his computer and only when it's spread out across the carpet into hundreds of tiny devices and components that he realises it might be difficult to re-assemble.
What a pillock.
