Going through the motions.

I generally find Article 50 negotiations make so much more sense if you listen to what Brussels is saying and then take them at their word. If they say the negotiations are going to be sequenced thusly then then that is how the negotiations are sequenced. If they say we must pay £39bn then I generally take that to mean that we must pay £39bn. If they say they are not going to reopen the backstop for negotiation then they are not going to reopen the backstop for negotiation.

Course, there's no fun in that. If you generally accept that this is not a negotiation and there is no high drama. The last minute shuttle diplomacy theatricals are entirely an invention of the media. This is entirely a fictional construct in tandem with the government who is also pretending there is work going on to jettison the backstop.

All the while Labour puts forth is own utterly pointless and undeliverable demands to give the outward appearance that they are contributing something - knowing that the government cannot and will not entertain the proposals. Everybody here is maintaining their own fiction in broad daylight as though it were not possible for us to verify events for ourselves.

There really is an Emperor's new clothes dynamic going on where there is a tacit agreement between the government and media to keep up this charade because without it, neither side has anything useful to do. Michel Barnier can stand on the doorstep of Number 10 with a loudhailer singing "We aren’t going to reopen the withdrawal agreement" and still we pretend that some sort of negotiation is in progress.

Back on planet earth this is going pretty much the way everyone expects it to go. We will waste a couple more weeks and then possible a couple more before the deal, as is, goes back to the house of commons where we have the final test of precisely how stupid parliament really is. I don't know what the current arithmetic stands at but as before this might as well go through on the toss of a coin.

Between now and then we simply have to bear witness to this dumpster fire of an administration making excuses for itself as just about everything else descends into farce. The inventions and brexcuses of the ERG are rolling in thick and fast. For the time being there is barely enough happening in the real world to sustain any kind of ongoing commentary. The writing's on the wall for all to see. We are just waiting for politics to collide with reality.