Thursday, 19 July 2018

Still nothing.

It has been a quiet week for Brexit events. That, though, really depends on your perspective. If you're a follower of Westminster affairs then it has been busy with a higher volume of noise. That to me is not newsworthy. Whatever parliamentarians agree between themselves is largely irrelevant without reference to what the EU might have to say about it.

Yesterday we saw MPs preening on Twitter that they've secured an amendment to keep us in  the European Medicines Agency. This, of course, is only possible as EEA an member - and they might as well have voted on moon cheese quotas.

Similarly I have not invested too much effort in picking apart the Chequers proposal in that there was never any chance the EU would accept it. Various noises from Brussels have already confirmed this so we are really no further forward than we were some weeks ago.

It therefore comes back to domestic politics and the scheming on the back benches which is both unpredictable and tedious. Every moment they waste brings us closer to a calamitous no deal Brexit and there's not a lot any of us can do about that.

Meanwhile, various voices in the Tory sphere have suddenly discovered the EEA option as a "safe harbour" with some suggesting we could use the EEA for a short spell - failing to note that it would take three to four years just to finalise such an arrangement. As usual there lacks the coherence to come up with any strategy worth its name - so again, there is nothing at all new to report.

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