An Indefinite Article

What are the chances of survival if a modern jet explodes in mid air? Yet before each flight we’re required to listen to the safety announcement and instructions on what to do when crashing into the sea, often despite the reality that the flight is almost entirely over land. And so it must have been when some Euronerd realised they needed “Article 50” – a never to be used escape option with no legs, or for that matter wings.

Whoever dreamt up this two year “negotiation period” had either never negotiated anything in his/her life, or had an ulterior motive – give the errant leaver time to come to its senses.

So now Parliament will reject the current proposition and we’ll be closing in on “The People’s Vote”. Three options: Stay In, dodgy deal, or no deal. Watch out for massive pressure to vote “remain” as the only practical option now left on the table.

TheStickler is almost too modest to observe that he predicted this at the outset – http://thestickler.org.uk/?p=320.

But if a typical bloke on a Clapham omnibus could see this what on earth have the professional politicians been doing for the past 20 months or so? Apart from a succession of impotent Brexit Secretaries rushing after each other through the revolving door who’s been doing what?

• Corbyn? Head down and look the other way.
• The Liberals? They championed remain in the referendum and have been struck dumb since.
• The Unionists? Ironic that they are left reminding us about our United Kingdom while St Theresa flogs it off to the lowest bidder.

Big business is demanding “certainty”. If they thought they could get away with it they’d demand guaranteed profits too. Neither is plausible. Success in business, aside from having products/services to sell, is all about assessing and managing risk. These guys are actually best placed to deal with uncertainty, or they wouldn’t be in post.

But having created a 2yr vacuum under the rules of Article 50 while people on both sides of the channel tried to work out how to negotiate a settlement that the EU doesn’t want and the UK doesn’t need in order to keep their respective tribes happy and try to get re-elected we’re now at the point where this new “withdrawal agreement”* simply kicks the difficult stuff into the long grass for a further period, and guess what – the same issues will pertain whenever a new deadline looms.

TheStickler wonders whether we should have simply filed under Article 50, announced we were perfectly content to have no deal at all, WTO rules etc. and then spend the intervening time planning for this and this alone, and making detailed arrangements to keep the trucks crossing the channel, the planes in the sky, the medicines in the pharmacies etc. etc. etc.

How long before the EU then approached us and proposed some better terms to the benefit of all? Then all the “hard talk” could have been from the UK side (eg “no that’s not a good enough deal, come back with some fresh ideas” (sound familiar?)) etc. and we would have been in the driving seat. No need to extend any deadlines or invent any impractical backstops. We’d have been ready by March 29, and the EU would have always been able to come back after that date with more ideas if and when they had some to offer.

Why didn’t we do this? Because this was never really about exiting the European Union, it was never meant to be Brexit. This was supposed to be Fixit –  where the warring factions of the Tory party finally realised the game was up and united behind their leader. David who? Yes, that guy – the architect of this entire pointless and utterly silly fandango, who scarpered rapidly into obscurity when he realised what he’d done. Don’t blame Boris and The Brexit Bulldog (DD to his friends) for vanishing under a pile of deckchairs on the Titanic without thinking back to the start of all this, and how it should never ever have happened in the first place.

Dominic Raab is on a walking holiday along the north coast of France – he may be some time.

*withdrawal agreement – an irresponsible and unlikely arrangement in which both sides trust the other to part company seconds before the climax!

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