scaffold time?

Well, here we are in November, the point at which I've decided that loner David Davis has blown the Brexit negotiation. There's so much other diversionary noise around at the moment, with abundant sleaze oozing from Westminster, so it is becoming even easier to become distracted.

Many of the 'secret' papers about to be released have already had airings in other formats, through the consultants that wrote them in the first place. Their general tenet is gloom and doom, which was mainly hidden through the lies of the referendum.

But like a gold rush, there's plenty of bystanders prepared to take money from those intent on the original task.

Now it has taken a 'humble address' to parliament to get these various reports into the limelight so that they can be released. There's two ways to issue them as well; copy them onto a memory stick and give them to someone to manage, or to start a 12 week prognostication about whether this constitutes an opposition motion and then create a committee to redact the papers before they can be seen. Perhaps the current state of Big Ben's tower and the almost hidden clock face is a metaphor for the way that Parliament is operating?

But then, I suppose playing an Erskine May contempt of parliament card might assist the release of the documents? Although, even if it happens quickly, it would still show that those in the negotiation have little regard for transparency. The high turnover of senior ministers and even a permanent secretary in the Brexit department become another symptom of the malaise.

Until recently I'd assumed a further Tory shuffle would require new people to pick up the hot potatoes, much as the churlish Cameron, Osborne, Johnson and Gove did way back when. I suppose it could still happen.

There's under a year to get the big stuff in place now, which is shaping as either unlikely or only to be achieved in a desperate way.