ml1dch

But as you say - there isn't a "more positively" solution. And it's a case of "which promise of someone saying they are definitely not going to do something" gets broken. Of the three that apparently aren't going to happen, 1) no border, 2) the UK agreeing to keep things just as they are from their side and 3) the EU just agreeing to keep everything as they are from their side, I'd say that (3) is the least likely by quite a long way.

Hmm. Maybe not the Premier League but... Biggest in the world at the end of the nineteenth century, muddles through much of the twentieth century with periods of extreme glory punctuated by periods of humbling decline, all the while having the feeling that we're never again going to be as big as we once were. The latter part of the nineties, the optimism picks up, under the stewardship of someone who looked like a bit of a saviour once upon a time, but by around 2005 pretty much everyone hates him and wants rid. When he finally does one, a new era starts at the end of the decade, with an unexpectedly professional feel, with new people in charge. The early glow doesn't last long though, and ultimately cutting back the finances means that things get worse and worse. Around 2016, the arse properly falls out the bottom of it, and the couple of years since see catastrophic mismanagement piled on top of mismanagement as we all try frantically to come to terms with terrible, self-inflicted decisions. And Sherwood is definitely the Farage of this tale.

Yes, no and maybe. It's important to remember this isn't happening in a UK / Ireland vacuum. If there is a "porous" EU frontier, then the other 26 countries aren't going to shrug their shoulders and carry on as before. If they feel that the external border of their internal market isn't being appropriately policed, they will do it themselves. So Irish exports into France and Spain will be treated as if they were coming from outside mutually regulated territory. Current opinion in Ireland (at least, the last time I saw it being reported) is pretty firmly behind Varadkar's handling of this, and anger there is mainly directed at the UK rather than their own Government. Whether that is still the case if they are being forced to deal with the fallout, who knows. However, if it is a proper, chaotic, crash-out at the end of March though, nobody's attention will be on sanitary checks on crates of butter and cheese going through Derry and Lifford for a long, long time.

[Speculation] A decent number probably think we left sometime in summer 2016 and haven't given it two minutes thought since then. [Speculation\]

(nicked from Twitter) As there is no more road to kick the can down anymore, the can has been bundled into the boot of John Bercow's car.

I've seen blancmanges with more backbone.

If throwing away a comfortable parliamentary majority in an unnecessary election wasn't enough of a reason for May to fall, losing a vote on an amendment that just allows other amendments to hypothetically be made to future legislation probably isn't going to do it either.

Government is apparently confident they have the numbers to defeat the Grieve amendment, due to a number of Labour MPs potentially voting with them. What an absolute shambles for Parliament if that comes to pass. And the leaks from the Council Meeting next week suggest that we've got nothing new to say on Ireland (as if another three months was ever likely to turn black into white and up into down) and member states are being encouraged to step up preparation for no agreement. So the catastrophic option is still very much on the table.

Apparently he's spent the last twenty years going to every sparsely attended Friday afternoon vote, when 95% of MPs have clocked off for the weekend, to make sure things aren't being pushed into law without being properly scrutinized and debated. So I'd say his intentions on this are admirable, even if it throws up aberrations like today. On the flip side, he's also one of those rabid Europhobes, so clearly a colossal bell-end who can suck up every bit of bile thrown at him on this matter.

Although if you believe Ken Clarke, Parliament basically nodded through de facto CU/SM (for Northern Ireland at least) without really realising it yesterday. The verbal commitments to change nothing in Ireland were put into the bill, with the following clauses that legally preclude any of the following things: (i) physical infrastructure, including border posts, (ii) a requirement for customs or regulatory compliance checks, (iii) a requirement for security checks, (iv) random checks on goods vehicles, or (v) any other checks and controls, that did not exist before exit day and are not subject to an agreement between Her Majesty’s Government and the Government of Ireland So given there isn't a way to do that we without those two areas sharing the same regulatory space, Northern Ireland is sorted at least.

Probably the Italian-designed, Qatari-owned skyscraper.

Nope, nothing like that. The House of Commons are voting on amendments made by the House of Lords to the bill that converts current EU law into UK law. So things like : "Amendment 3 - environmental protections Maintains EU environmental protections in domestic law, with a body to enforce compliance" I mean, imagine the horrible consequences if we had to put up with something like that.

To be fair, it was made very clear during the referendum that if you were in favour of mutual recognition of standards, it meant you were anti-Stonehenge and the Red Arrows. Very clear indeed.

I can't find a clip to embed, but she called into Farage's LBC show earlier. The startled panic on his face as he cuts her off is great. Like a teenager trying to switch off his pornography as his mum walks into his bedroom. Followed by the scowl at his producer for letting her call go through.

It's certainly difficult to see a way that the position can be undermined more than she and Davis have done already. On the votes tomorrow, 49 and 95 are the only two that matter (Parliament taking control of the negotiations in the event of a rejected deal and the removal of the date in the legislation). The rest can sail away down the drain as long as those two squeak through. Those two stay in the Bill and I'll be pretty confident that this is all going to be alright in the end. Taken out, and it suggests that Parliament is just going to lie down and accept its rogering, on this and the wars yet to come.

What is the punishment for treason these days?

The EU's response to the UK backstop proposals: (paraphrasing) "But this doesn't do any of the stuff that it's supposed to, does it?" The 12-page version is available for download if anyone is still interested in this sort of thing.

£15,000 was the cost it would seem. Not paid by Ben Bradley in the end, obvs, but by Tory party donors. Edit - one of whom is CEO of the Conservative Party.

Corbyn is quite obviously a bit of a simpleton, but when people are compiling the list of villains who screwed the UK, some through malice, some through idiocy his name is going to come quite a long way down the list.

The Government has published it's proposals for the "Irish border backstop". They are quite clear, it is to be a time limited backstop (so not a backstop at all) with no specific time limit. And there will definitely be some sort of solution that will be in place. And there are loads of ways to do this, which we'll talk about another time. The wheels are falling off the clown car.

If he can hold off until Tuesday then he can do it to celebrate the 10th anniversary of his previous resignation. Back then it was partly in protest at the idea that foreign nationals should be registered and carry ID cards, which he thought was the start of the path to a national database. Now he wants to be able to register non-UK EU nationals and for them to carry ID cards. His brain must be a terribly muddled place to be.

Well, my apologies if I've misunderstood your position. But I'm sure you can appreciate that from a reader's position "23 months of posturing and then 4 weeks of bending over" and "just that as in most negotiations we'll standoff for months and months and find that in the days and hours leading up to deadline agreements will finally get made" aren't exactly the same thing

Apologies if it sounds patronising, but it's not really a prediction. It's all there, in black and white in the EU Notices to Stakeholders. One through sixty-six. Two new ones came out today, Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights and Preferential Origins of Goods. They're pretty dry and technical, granted. But they tell you exactly what will happen. It's an absolute legal consequence of our current position. Now, it might not come to pass. But unless the Government bends until it breaks, that is how this plays out. Not with Davis and Barnier discussing quotas at the end of March next year until they pop out at 10pm sharing a cigar and a back-slap On the bright side, the Government has capitulated every step of the way so far when it's mattered. So you'll probably be fine.

I'm pretty sure I got the right end of the stick, I just don't think you appreciate that this isn't two parties haggling over who gets what, and that the delay isn't a case of which side blinks first. Bicks pretty much covered it. This is us saying "we want all this stuff", them saying "to get that, you need to do this, this and this". Us saying "we told people we can't do that". Them saying "fine, that's not our problem". Rinse and repeat once a month for the last year. Nothing has moved. We are still at Day 1. We're at the absolute beginning of this. And we'll stay there until we either agree to basically stay in, or walk away and ruin the country. Literal food shortages, fuel-rationing, troops on the streets ruin the country. And the people in charge know this (well, some of them), which is why they are petrified of both choices. And they won't make it until they're forced to, either by parliament or the Commission. Quotas, tax rates, access, benefits etc might as well be in another galaxy.