ml1dch

Nah, it'll be all the turnips and swede you can eat come April 2019. They're just getting ahead of the new national diet.

We clearly move in different circles. I don't know any of any age.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/oct/30/facts-support-mps-claim-that-better-educated-voted-remain-pollster Obviously level of education and level of intelligence aren't a direct corollary (hell, look at the current Government). But the facts are there.

"All we need to do is just keep quiet, say nothing and the public will think we're better than the Tories" <narrator> "They didn't"

I wonder if anybody would have thought back in summer 2016 that this is the achievement that the Government would be boasting about with 12 weeks to go.

"What do you want?" "Whatever we're told that we want"

Poor bugger. Already has to put up with all that sh*t in the The Sun and now he's to blame for Brexit as well.

Absolutely. Anyone who says "no-deal can't happen because Parliament won't allow it", what are the specific permutations that are going to result in the Prime Minister, be it May or AN Other, rescinding the Article 50 notification? That is the only thing over which the UK has full control against not crashing out.

It really, really doesn't.

"Refugees, sir. Nearly half a dozen of them"

They'll be getting angry at the summer soon, with it's provocative, unpatriotic blue and yellow skies.

I'm clearly being dim, so please indulge me. So a UK Government commissioned lorry, approaches the quayside at Ostend to board a UK Government commissioned ferry returning to the recently dredged port of Ramsgate, laden with lettuces and peppers from the Dutch lowlands for the starving citizens of Brexit Britain. What is le Monsieur/ de heer at the office stopping that lorry to check for? Tariffs due aren't his problem. Quality control of the contents isn't his problem. Other way, sure. Check everything right down to the wooden pallets and the driver's sandwiches. I just don't see what's causing the queues with goods going this way. I don't see myself as a head-in-the-sand type on this issue - I was saying all this would be the case fifteen months ago. I just don't see it in this particular scenario,

A deal has been struck. It's been agreed by 28 countries and the European Commission. Everyone else is now just waiting for us to walk through the door that we asked to open. This isn't a "10pm in late March in a smoke-filled room in Berlymont, a deal is finally struck" situation. That theatre was December. That's the thing we now have.

Of course they will. Britain's export trade will be decimated overnight. But if the Government decides that it wants make say, Ramsgate an import-only port, and waive all checks on lorries arriving from Ostend, there's no reason that huge queues will build up on the Belgian side, as there's nothing coming over from the British side in the first place to create those queues.

Why would it?

Yes and no. You're right about what the issue is, but maybe not on the ultimate consequence of that issue. When every item in every package on every lorry needs to be checked for customs and quality, what's more likely than huge queues of lorries is far fewer lorries. It'll stop being as commercially viable. If you were a buyer in Germany or Denmark needing a shipment urgently at the start of April, would you risk buying from the UK? If were a UK exporter, would you risk sending the shipment without a guarantee that it would arrive on time? If you were the haulier, would you risk accepting the job? Haulage then works with the loads being emptied on one side, refilled and brought back to source to be unloaded so fewer lorries going means fewer to come back. The queues will be on the French / Dutch / Belgian side - if the Government wants to throw the border open and let every package through, that's in their gift to give. Hugely irresponsible (and a probable risk to public health), sure - but that's not stopped them with this whole policy up to now. So they send empty lorries on empty ferries, load them up and send them straight back, Berlin airlift-style. It makes sure those vegetables and medicines still arrive, if they can't rely on the commercial sector to make it happen. Utterly humiliating for everyone involved and an enormous cost to the taxpayer, but it should broadly serve the purpose that it's supposed to.

This is being done through the Chris Grayling-led Department of Transport, isn't it? I'm sure it'll all be just fine.

Savile. Mugabe. Goodwin. Redwood.

While we're war-gaming, I'll throw one out there. I think that if this is going to be stopped, Labour won't be the ones to initiate anything, and it would rely on some Conservative MPs sacrificing their careers in the national interest. So even before I start it's clearly a long-shot. A few (and it only needs to be a few) Tory MPs of the Greening / Boles variety go to Labour and say that they will support a no-confidence motion and allow Corbyn to form a minority Government, on the proviso that he cancels the article 50 notification. Once that happens, their support ends - meaning that the election that he wants will then happen. Those Tory MPs having resigned the whip basically give up their political careers, but know that they did so in saving their country from ruin (in the immediate term at least, obviously everything is f***** in the medium term whatever happens) If it needed 20 of them, it would be clearly a non-starter. But five or six... Thoroughly unlikely, I accept. And we'd have to be getting well into March before the desperation set in enough. But I'm yet to see any version of the next three months that I'd describe as likely. So it'll do until the mess gets here.

Absolutely. Which is why the Governments of all 28 countries, plus the Commission have all agreed a withdrawal treaty to mitigate those problems. Or at the very least, turn them into tomorrow's problems. The UK Parliament deciding it doesn't want to pass it is not a trigger for "ok, let's talk about it a bit more". It's a trigger for stepping back to avoid the worst effects of the nervous breakdown their neighbour is going through. The withdrawal agreement is what it is. It is accepted by Parliament. Or somehow we don't leave. Or we step off the cliff. There isn't an option four anymore. Any of those three choices can be done by March, apart from the hypothetical referendum needed for not leaving. So there is no reason to extend in any other circumstances.

That's quite the blanket statement you've got going on there. Which part of an extension is in their interest? What are they extending it for?

Immigration is a shared competence - things like access to social services and registration systems are under the control of member states, not the Commission. Could they do or say a bit more? Probably. Can they unilaterally say "nothing changes for British people across the EU?" Only if we're comfortable with the Commission deciding third-country immigration policy for 27 independent countries.

The long and the short of it is that they are generally prepared to be accommodating to things that have a benefit for them. So a referendum between the agreed deal and staying? Fine, they'll make time. Between the agreed deal and the crash-out favoured by idiots? No chance, what's in it for them? A general election with two sides arguing which of their fantasy renegotiations would be better? Nope. A general election with one manifesto clearly backing the withdrawal agreement and the other clearly backing remain? They'll do what they can to make it work. The current Labour position of "we want an election to be in power to go back and renegotiate the withdrawal agreement" - not a hope in hell they'll extend anything. (I think this is broadly in line with what you've been saying)

Cool, well there's probably plenty of time to play the long game. No rush to start on plan A. Maybe pencil it in for some time next summer.

Should they not be united behind the party policy agreed at conference, that they should attempt to force a general election, and if that fails then they should be attempting to force a new referendum?