Boris is a cad #94

Day job intruded again. Nerves are getting really strained,obviously. The Graun delivered itself of a classic petite-bourgeois hectoring in an editorial. Nothing changes, but it feels better:

Boris Johnson got where he is today by telling lies about Europe. He made stories up as a journalist. He told fibs on an industrial scale in the referendum campaign. Now he is telling whoppers as prime minister too....Mr Johnson arrived in Brussels to tell the EU that Britain was not ready to make a fisheries agreement, would never accept the European court of justice as the arbiter on future disputes, and could not agree to any form of agreement on trading standards that tied Britain’s hands to EU rules...

But this was not sticking to his guns, dear me, no...

A prime minister who wanted a deal to continue trading with this country’s largest market would not have said any of this. The fishing industry is not so large that its needs should prevent a wider agreement. There is no overriding reason of practice or principle why an arbitration system involving the ECJ cannot be devised. Most important of all, Britain ought to agree that some regulatory alignment with the single market to ensure a level playing field is overwhelmingly in its own economic interest.

the enlightened sharing of sovereignty is involved in every trade deal that Britain or any other nation will ever strike and is fundamental to the working of international relations.

Giving in, 'enlightened sharing of sovereignty', fuck the fishermen -- who can tell the difference? Brussels...

It is entirely right for the EU to make the granting of preferential trade access conditional on at least some form of continuing alignment on subsidies, tax, labour standards, competition rules and environmental safeguards....Any other approach involves trusting Britain not to break its word. Why should the EU do that, especially in the wake of the UK’s internal market bill which, until this week, contained clauses that allow Britain to ignore international law and its own treaties?

Just for the record, it was the EU that recently increased it's demands for a ratchet, of course, and has smuggled in various other sneaky provisions. Nevertheless...

Because of him and his catastrophic cause of regaining some imaginary lost British greatness, [well, and the majority of the voting public]  this country now stands on the brink of rupture with Europe. 

'Europe' as an imaginary lost  place of harmony and civilisation is still alive then.

Meanwhile, the stalemate on the EU budget has been ended by a fudge. The details are here. The  crucial bit is in the last sentence:

“It will be crucial that commission president [Ursula] von der Leyen remains firm and is not guided by lazy and non-binding declarations of the member states.”