Many have complained and contrasted Boris Johnson’s blustering speech yesterday with the EU Negotiating Guidelines published on the same day. The PM’s utterance was long on the usual rhetoric about  sovereignty, delivering what ‘the people’ voted for and a buccaneering Britain and characteristically short of any detail: the EU Guidelines are 33 pages long on … Continue reading Fire and Fury and Signifying… Surrender?

This blog has argued that Boris Johnson is likely to meet the 31 January 2021 deadline for concluding a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the EU by embodying in an FTA all or most of the terms of the Transitional Arrangements (TAs) that will come into force in 25 days with a mechanism to amend … Continue reading We’re In Charge…We Are!

Everyone, other than the UK government, insists that negotiating and implementing a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between the UK and the EU by January 2021 is improbable, many would argue impossible. Yet the Withdrawal Bill that the government has brought before Parliament prohibits the UK seeking an extension to the  ‘standstill’ Transitional Arrangements beyond that … Continue reading The Harder the Deadline the Softer the Brexit?

Whom do you think  you are kidding Mr Johnson If you think that Brexit’s done   Barnier is the boy to stop your little game Barnier is the boy to make you think again   ‘Cause whom do you think you are kidding Mr Johnson If you think that Brexit’s done   Boris J is … Continue reading Whom do You think You’re Kidding

When the UK leaves the EU on 31 January it will surrender all its rights as a member of the EU but will remain subject to its laws and governed by its institutions. As Jacob Rees Mogg observed, the UK will be in the position of a vassal state including having to continue paying money … Continue reading Keep the White Flag Flying

As of today, the Tories look set to win a majority. Why? Because splits in the Remain vote mean that in many constituencies voting for anyone other than the Tories will be as likely to help them to win as voting for them. For Brexiteers and Tories, this is a delightful prospect. For Remainers or … Continue reading Be Still Your Beating Hearts

Concluding ‘trade agreements’ usually involve improving the terms of trade between countries by amicable negotiations in which both parties seek to open up trade under mutually beneficial arrangements. Restricting rights to trade is usually the hostile business of unilaterally imposing trade restrictions, called ‘sanctions’, that harm the other party. Unilaterally abolishing mutually agreed trade relations … Continue reading Vote Tory! Vote Surrender?

    It is heart-warming to see how Brexit has brought the most unlikely people together. Not least is the relationship between Mr Jacob Rees Mogg, Gent., and that paragon of middle class servility, Andrew Brigden (officer class candidate: failed). It might even be rumoured that their bonding could underpin an initiative in the Tory … Continue reading Brexit: Bringing People Together

This blog has been silenced by the sheer and utter state of uncertainty surrounding Brexit, the possible outcomes of the general election and hence the impossibility of making choices on the basis of expected outcomes. Who can tell whether, a decade on, it will have been better to have stayed ‘In’ with the existing or … Continue reading Fewer Rights, More Power: But Whose?

This blog has maintained from the outset that there was little or no prospect of the EU and UK escaping each other. At one point, it likened the Brexiteers to a motorcycle gang hopelessly but furiously roaring up and down a wall looking for a place where, like Steve McQueen in the Great Escape, they … Continue reading Daisy’s Dock