The Brexit Chronicles

Mercy sakes alive, looks like we've got us a convoy!

Published on January the 8th, 2019.

"One-nine for a copy, one-nine for a copy; has anyone got their ears on, c'mon?" Apparently the UK is ready for a 'No Deal' Brexit if that turns out to be the case; we've proven it to be so yesterday by practicing the establishment of a holding area for Dover port bound traffic with as many as eighty-nine trucks on the disused airfield at Manston, Kent. No doubt some enduring rigger glove friendships were formed by the plastic portaloo cubicles, so the £50,000 spent on Operation Brock wasn't entirely wasted, but as a test of preparedness it was an utter farce.

Why is taxpayers' money being thrown away on exercises like these? Obviously such pathetic spectacles are not intended to demonstrate Britain's resolve to the EU: Had that been the case the serious No Deal planning would have begun in earnest and been publicised a year ago, when it was clear in which direction the negotiations were heading, giving businesses ample time to get ready. Instead this feeble effort was designed to ridicule the No Deal option; to make it appear so unworkably chaotic as to preclude anyone voting for it. But here's the problem; the Prime Minister having made herself so thoroughly unpopular within her own party with her 'my way or the highway' tactics, there's a very real risk it is the highway that will actually be chosen. So was that her plan all along? Is Theresa The Appeaser really the ultimate deep-cover Leaver, and this her cunning Churchillian plan to see the job through? No; she's just not that bright. And if her strategy was to keep putting the 'deal' before Parliament until their resistance broke, then Erskine May, the venerable Westminster proceedings rulebook, says otherwise.

In portraying approval of her withdrawal agreement as an all or nothing choice, May is on the cusp of losing it all. By trying to force the blatantly unacceptable she's shown herself to be as away with the faeries as defence minister Gavin Williamson, who recently speculated that post-Brexit, the UK might build new overseas military bases in areas of concern to it: This, the same nation who had to scramble an ageing minesweeper reprieved from the Portsmouth scrapyard in order to patrol the English Channel as part of a vain attempt to combat the latest wave of waterborne migration! It would be hilarious if it weren't so tragic.

And in other news, today the government's Brexit advice to individuals has been posted online at
https://euexit.campaign.gov.uk/ Unfortunately I'm unable to insert a live hyperlink into the text so you'll have to copy and paste into your browser to see for yourself the patronisingly simplistic artwork and retread of the existing guidance. At least you're not urged to take your interior doors off and make them into a shelter! Well, not yet...