Same old same old

A short (I hope) bout of illness has prevented posting for a month or so. Mostly the news seems to have concerned details of the political processes and the progress of various kinds of talks. The EU and the UK have agreed on ways to settle the Irish border question, the rights of EU citizens and the ludicrously named 'divorce bill' and we are now in for further endless wrangling at Stage 2 -- the trade talks. 

There have been conflicts inside Parliament with the Government losing for the first time over whether and how Parliament gets to  vote on the final settlement, and whether or not there have been 'impact assessments' on Brexit. The Secretary of State was forced into hilariously cynical manoeuvring over that issue, first of all trying to prevent Parliament from seeing these impact statements then having to insist that they did not exist after all. The wider admissison was that no-one in the Government had done anything to prepare for what might happen if the people were silly enough to vote for Brexit, so confident were they that they had us all by the short and curlies. It is all a dreadful confession of Establishment ineptitude.

Nothing much seems to have happened on the ideological front except the strange ways the Remainers kept changing their priorities as particular issues came to the fore. You will remember, O Single Reader my continued quest to establish just what is so attractive about the EU, why it is worth so much passionate support. This last month or so it seems to have varied weekly --first rights for (EU) citizens, then, when that was settled, the righteous demand for a divorce bill, then the Irish border. As each item was settled, the Remainer press was unsure whether to celebrate an EU victory, or to berate the Government for weakness -- K Gurumurthy, Channel 4 news reporter, started every interview with a Tory with demanding to know if this is what Brexit supporters had voted for, as if he was somehow representing Brexiteers. It was really vengeful schadenfreude of the lecturing classes and clutching at straws hoping for a new referendum and cheaper strawberries, no doubt.

Suddenly, everyone in Europe seemed passionately worried about the Irish Question too, although there was little sign in the UK of concern or action during the 30 years of the Troubles. It was all ostensibly about peace, although it also leaked out that the real issue was trade with the whole EU -- if the Republic of Ireland was allowed to trade freely with Northern Ireland, which remained in the UK, so the EU would look odd denying free trade with the rest of its empire.

Classically, EU press releases were just presented as news. K Wark on Newsnight asserted that the Government had just agreed to let EU rules continue during the transition period, even though the UK would have no voice. Brexiteer J Rees-Mogg protested that this had not been agreed by the Government. K Wark was in no position to argue as she/they had evidently not researched this issue, so it was just dropped.