a proper eton mess

Well someone has to eat our ad-hoc and barn-prepared pudding.

The slow wifi means that its taking longer to get the news here. I'm seeing that elsewhere people are asking about a leadership election for the Conservatives. The spokespeople are all saying "No" although based upon prior 'definitive' statements, they might as well save the electricity and ink.

So cynically, just before Parliament adjourns for their extensive summer holidays, we get the vote for the great Repeal Bill. Not since Magna Carta did we get something quite so vast. A kind of negatively framed Summa Carta Libertatum to switch all of the EU legislation back to UK, subject to its inevitable illumination with twinkling costs and changes from numerous expensive experts.

Not forgetting that £8bn-£10bn per year that UK currently contributes to EU, which they won't give up without a significant fight.

Mrs Maybe is now making overtures to other parties for consultations, but mainly as a way to shove legislation through when some of her own party are iffy about what is happening. Done differently, this could have been a thoughtful way to handle Brexit, but now it comes across as desperate measures.

May's own leitmotif is off key, stuck in a groove, like a defective android. Strong and Stable/No deal better than a bad deal/unborn chicken voices in my head, etc.

That's the problem with recent actions. They say one thing but then scrabble for any nearby straw to clutch.

Everything is as wobbly as a layered trifle that failed.

Some ingredients are being rescued but others just left to sink to the bottom. Instead of red lines we're seeing pink blancmange.

The uncertainties provide good cover in the negotiation because no-one will be able to tell the full outcome, particularly if a couple of maraschino cherries are divertingly placed on top of what will probably be renamed as an Eton mess.

Post Referendum and the recent election, we should have been able to see a way for UK Parliament to reinvent itself. Some chance. Even the startup sequence was delayed and fusty. The old party system is failing. The self-interested cooks are too busy arguing about the free booze to really worry about recipe. Some mould-breaking is required, perhaps from the newer entrants.

And alongside, in walk the Americans with a very, very big Trumpian offer. Very big. What's that old saying? If it looks to good to be true, it probably is too good to be true.