It slipped my attention that a few days ago this blog reached its third anniversary of commencement. It has been something of a rollercoaster. This last year has been especially arduous as we all find ourselves unable to influence events while this government drifts ever closer toward calamity. No progress has been made since December and we have regressed ever since.
Now it looks like there simply isn't going to be a deal. Theresa May cannot get Chequers though without splitting the party, but then anything she tries will have the same effect. There is nothing she can offer or concede that will keep the party together. Equally, if she walks away from the talks, that could be extremely damaging and threaten the Tories electoral chances.
Thus, what she is most likely doing is engineering increasingly frenetic talks which she will run right to the wire, giving the impression she is actively seeking a deal. This will go right to the 11th hour on 29 March, on the basis that she can also seek an Article 50 extension to get the ratification. But, when it fails at the eleventh hour, we automatically drop out of the EU. There is a "no deal" by default.
It will never go to parliament, there will not be a vote, and no chance of a referendum. She will then position the failure as down to the "intransigence" of the EU. She will make out that she was "this close" to a deal, but the EU pulled the plug. At the same time, the legend will be pushed that a "no deal" is benign - that the effects are tolerable. Thus, it will be made out that any and all serious consequences will be deliberate "punishment" by the EU.
This will invoke the "Blitz spirit" and unite the Tory party against a common external enemy - and there will be a majority of Tories who will happily believe that "Brussels bullies" are going out of their way to screw the UK. It's desperately shallow and predictable. The book is written and now they are playing out the chapters. As to what happens then is anyone's guess.
In the three years running this blog I have seen plenty of self-declared experts come and go. The one flaw they all share is their belief that their small piece of the puzzle is the whole picture. As a rule those who know about trade know very little about the EU and vice versa. Your view of Brexit, therefore, really depends on which expert you choose to believe.
I myself am not an expert. I have but one superpower and that is knowing a bullshitter when I see one. In this endeavour I happen to think there are no absolute experts because the subject matter is too wide, hugely unpredictable and there is always much more to learn. If you have a comprehensive list of what you don't know then you're doing quite well.
More to the point, we are in uncharted waters here, especially in the the even of no deal. Hitherto the EU has been a creature of rules but in a crisis we do not know how it will react or what pressures will be brought to bear. Much of our working assumptions are on the basis of what the law says but come the day we will see politics coming into play.
Of immediate concern will be the Northern Irish border, where neither party is in any particular rush to install border infrastructure. A thread by Dimitry Grosoubinski, an informed trade commentator on Twitter, echoes our view that those "WTO rules" are not necessarily a show stopper and his blog further outlines why uncertified schedules are not the drama that many pretend they are.
What matters is how prepared we are for such an eventuality in terms of our exports and arrangements for the myriad of peripheral issues that could see airlines grounded. Only a fool would believe that a collapse of the existing legal order has no real world consequences.
The Tories probably think that if they can bluff their way through the initial impact then they are shielded from electoral oblivion as the nation reels at the prospect of a Corbyn government. If not, then the subsequent economic harm can be blamed on Corbyn and his left wing politics. More than likely Corbyn would exacerbate the problems.
That, though, is a huge gamble because it hinges on no deal being a drama free walk in the park and it also assumes that the wider public can be taken for fools. There are enough people who won't buy the line that the EU is to blame and the EU isn't going to lie back and take the rap. Moreover, even if the headline impacts turn out to be overstated, the impact on Brexiter sacred cows like fishing will be extremely bad press for them.
In the meantime the media will churn over the prospects of a leadership contest but I suspect Mrs May will cling on at least for the duration of Article 50 talks. It is then a question of who takes the reigns the day after. One suspects Rees-Mogg is playing the long game and does not want the poisoned chalice, leaving the way clear for the narcissist Johnson.
By this point politics is back with a bang. There will be massive disapproval of both parties with no obvious alternative. The next election will be decided by an accident of numbers as disaffection rises. The credibility of the Brexiters will be spent, the centrists will have no answers and nobody will command an outright majority. By then it will be abundantly clear that politics as we know it just doesn't work. That is why we need to be talking about alternatives. This is the end of the line for politics as we know it.
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