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It has been a year of horrors such that it is easy to lose sight of how weird things are. But Thursday was one of those days when we glided a little more through the looking glass.
Just a year ago, many opposition MPs were still waiting for a second referendum on the UK’s membership in the EU on the off chance that the public had changed their minds. Now those same MPs are begging the government to simply get a deal, any deal, no matter how bad, to avoid a no-deal Brexit on December 31. Your expectations have fallen so low.
At the same time, most Conservative MPs, who had previously praised the “oven-ready” deal and openly bragged that a new trade deal was the easiest in the world and that a no-deal was unthinkable, now urge Boris Johnson to opt for that same no-deal Brexit. No more bullshit with an EU stubbornly clinging to the notions of fisheries, governance and a level playing field – the very issues it has been talking about for years – and it will just walk away on the terms of the World Trade Organization.
So we are in an upside-down world where Labor seems to have more interest in seeing the government strike a last-minute deal than the Conservatives. Go figure.
In the Commons there was a distinct sense of deja vu as, for the second time in a week, Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, had gotten an urgent question to ask her opposite number, Michael Gove, to give an answer. update on the status of Brexit negotiations. And for the second time in a week, the governor refused to attend in person and sent his deputy, Penny Mordaunt, to do his dirty work for him.
And for the second time in a week, Mordaunt had nothing new to say. Mainly because there was nothing new to say, but partly because even if there was, Mordaunt would be among the last to know. So he recited what he had learned from the 24-hour media.
Boris Johnson had flown to Brussels to dine with the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and had achieved as little as everyone expected. Other than that, the previous day’s deadline had been moved to Sunday. So in the meantime we were where we were, with the UK and the EU still a long way from any deal, but there was a deal to be made as long as the EU gave way on all its red lines. After all, it was the least they could do given that the UK had withdrawn its threat to violate international law in a deal it had negotiated less than a year ago.
This was all too much for Reeves and you could feel the desperation in his voice as he responded. How did we learn more about what the two leaders had eaten (fish, followed by an Aussie-style pavlova – a nice EU shadow) than what they had actually said to each other? And how come Boris had come back and gone into hiding directly? Shouldn’t the prime minister show a little more leadership by making a public statement to assure the country that there were at least some contingency plans in place if shit really hit the fan?
What were the plans for the security of the nations? After all, the EU had published its contingency plans, which seemed to amount to things getting worse and worse for the UK until a time when someone came up with something better.
At that point, Mordaunt lost the plot and began blaming Labor for failing to reach a trade deal. At Pennyworld, Labor was guilty of treason for daring to hope for a positive outcome in the negotiations. The same negotiations that she herself had just said that she wanted to end positively.
Labor’s crazy idea that a deal was better than no deal had completely undermined the government’s position. By trying to accommodate a bad deal on the grounds that it was the worst option, they had somehow managed to make a no-deal that much more likely. This was like blaming the Poles for the German invasion of Poland in 1939. At times like this, satire makes no sense. Simply transcribing the madness is more absurd than anything I can invent.
“We all want a deal,” said Hilary Benn of Labor. Only it was becoming increasingly clear that this was not true, as Tory after Tory rose to say that they would be much happier without a deal and that they would be devastated by any deal other than one involving the EU capitulating in all its demands. They have not yet realized that the goal of a trade deal is that it inevitably involves external governance and a loss of sovereignty, but that these losses are offset by gains.
From then on, we slipped further and further down the rabbit hole. Labor Bill Esterson wondered if we could have an economic impact assessment of any deal with the EU that we rejected, just to be able to compare it to the 2% loss in GDP that the Office of Budget Responsibility was forecasting for a no-deal. Just so we could have a sliding door moment where we could see how much better life could be without trucks full of food and medicine parked on the French border. Mordaunt didn’t think it was a good idea. It’s much better to jump into a no-deal without any regrets.
Almost as an afterthought, Mordaunt added that Sunday might not be the final deadline after all. We could decide to keep talking nonsense until December 31st because that could make the end of the transition even more dramatic. If not less inevitable.
Either Mordaunt was lying to herself and the Commons or she is a bit flustered if she thinks the EU is going to change its position significantly in the next three weeks. So the idea persisted that Reeves and Mordaunt would return next Monday with the same urgent question and the same lack of answers. And if that doesn’t give you nightmares, me too.
