According to Prime Minster May – and her cabinet – if any EU leave deal fails to get enough support in yet another vote rerun then the UK’s exit day will be 29-Mar-2019. The date that was put into law last year.
However, according to His Ollyness The Mekon, not accepting a deal will put back our leaving date – not just by a few days but by an extended period. Our assumption being that May’s failure to get enough votes would then require the vote to be repeated time and time again until it does get forced through. And that could need a very long time.
Any change of leaving date would require a change in the UK law – and the agreement of all the EU members.
Which of these options is our government’s plan? Who is giving us a straight answer and who is trying to mislead us?
By the end of March we should have an answer – but both options are simply following on from the step that is deeply undemocratic. A vote on a very bad deal.
The May-Robins Withdrawal Agreement has already been comprehensively rejected by parliament. It suffered a record defeat. May and her cabinet should have accepted the result; not still be hawking it around Westminster. It is dead! It stinks!
They – the government and public service – should now be in full-scale preparation for leaving the EU on World Trade Organisation terms next month. They should have told all public and private sector organisations that this is our short-term future – as soon as the Withdrawal Agreement was defeated.
Instead we now see hundreds of head-less chickens in Westminster thrashing around while leaving everyone else to fend for themselves ..
Despite 800+ days of argument the opposing sides seem even more split now than they have ever been. In theory the EU want to see a final plan at their conference in just 38 days time – but that seems unlikely. Parliament has only being back in session for a week and MPs main pre-occupation seems to be their party conferences later this month.
Only yesterday we were told by the chief executive of HMRC that setting up new systems to handle either of the customs options being promoted by our politicians would take three to five years to put in place. That’s three to five years on from when a choice is actually made. And with total costs estimated at £17,000 million to £20,000 million per year – it would cost more than EU membership! Clearly neither of the two options proposed is a practical or pragmatic solution for our needs with a 2019 target rapidly approaching.
So this week in Downing Street our Prime Minister carried out the traditional reshuffle of the table seating plan of that limited pack of Right Honorables making up her Cabinet. The spin machines claim that these changes were significant but few seem to agree. In reality the changes look pretty limited with the only obvious trend being more power to MPs who have, so far, been working against a successful exit from the European Union.
Theresa May’s speech in Florence today might as well have been backed by music and lyrics from Paul Simon –