What a tangled Brexit web we weave
George Bernard Shaw once began a BBC radio talk in the 1930s with the ominous words: “People often ask me: Is Britain heading straight for disaster?” Then he gave his cheerful reply: “That is a question I can easily answer: Britain is not heading straight for anything.”
Applying that analysis to the current state of British politics over Brexit, one might say that Britain has been zig-zagging to disaster for almost the whole of this year. After innumerable negotiations, false dawns, Cabinet rows and ministerial resignations, Shaw and I ask, has the country finally arrived at its destination?
In early November there was one sign that suggested the end-game was near. A Downing Street “communications grid” on how the government would sell the long-awaited EU-UK agreement in order to help it over the substantial humps of parliamentary opposition and popular scepticism was leaked to the BBC.
Inevitably, it made hilarious reading. There would be a Cabinet agreement on the…
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