No Deal Brexit

18.12.2020 Brexit

Deal or No Deal Brexit by the end of the year? Or delay via a mini Treaty?

The statement of the Conference of Presidents of the European Parliament has been an interesting development in the Brexit saga this week. The European Parliament is trying to impose a deadline at the end of Sunday 20 December for a

10.12.2020 Brexit

The UK had only one card to play in the Brexit end game: the timetable. And even that did not work.

I don’t know if it was the intended strategy all along (I first mused about it in November), but in these fraught December days in the Brexit end game it has become abundantly clear that the UK’s negotiation tactic has

08.12.2020 Brexit

When is Johnson going to meet von der Leyen? The sequence of the Brexit end game is very important

Now confirmed! *before* Monday 7 December at 1945, European Commission President von der Leyen tweeted out the statement that a meeting between her and Boris Johnson would take place “in the coming days”. It is now 22 hours on from

07.12.2020 Brexit

The No Deal Brexit Terminology

OK, I might be jumping the gun – there may yet be a Deal between Britain and the EU – but as a result of this discussion with Catherine De Vries, it’s important to grasp the nettle – what terminology

03.12.2020 Brexit

Notes on the timetable for a Deal, and how No Deal might play out

28 days to go to the end of the Brexit transition period. Things are getting edgy. The press is full of rumours of progress towards a Deal (or not). I’ve been trying to get my head around what is happening,

30.11.2020 Brexit

Is Brexiters’ absolutist notion of sovereignty going to lead the UK to a No Deal Brexit? We will shortly find out

Nicholas Westcott wrote an interesting piece for LSE last week entitled “A peculiar definition of sovereignty is the root cause of a failed Brexit“. The whole piece is worth reading, but one part struck me as especially apt. Brexiters “definition

22.11.2020 Brexit

Brexit negotiation delay – is it due to indecision, or is it by design?

As one of my sarcastic Twitter followers put it, are these Brexit negotiations sponsored by Microsoft Windows Autoupdate as they’ve been stuck on 95% for so long? Deadlines come and go. Even the supposedly firm one, EU side, at the

12.11.2020 Brexit

1 man. 7 days. Deal or No Deal Brexit. And yes, that man is Johnson.

There is scarcely a twist or turn in the Brexit story over the past 18 months I have not charted in my Brexit diagrams. The rationale is the same now as it was when I started: to work out what

10.11.2020 Brexit

The Internal Market Bill and Brexiters still unable to face the Brexit Trilemma

On 8 September Brandon Lewis uttered the now famous words: that the UK Government’s Internal Market Bill would “break international law in a very specific and limited way”. That set in train a series of events that even now, two

15.09.2020 Brexit

#BrexitDiagram Series 5 – Trade Deal or No Deal by the end of 2020?

For the past week I have had an awful sense of déjà vu. Shenanigans in the House of Commons about Brexit. Rumours about removal of the whip from Tory MPs should they rebel on votes. And the threat of No

29.02.2020 Brexit

The indivisibility of the 52% as method in Brexit, even now

This week something interesting happened in matters Brexit: farmers at the National Farmers’ Union conference booed environment minister George Eustice (FT story here (€)). This was connected to the news that direct payments to farmers will be reduced by 25%

05.09.2019 Brexit

How opposition parties can engineer a later general election, but get the election called before prorogation of Parliament

tl:dr; Opposition parties want to call an election as soon as possible, but want that election to happen as late as possible. An unconventional route – via a Vote of No Confidence tabled next week (9th September) – offers a