razzle dazzle

It's fascinating watching and listening to some of the politicians on telly at the moment. Some understand the nuances of the current situation. Whether one agrees with them or not, they can put forward reasoned arguments.

Others less so, reliant upon dogma and doing what they are told to do. I've also heard some of them interviewed and simply spout received viewpoints and opinions without anything to back them up.

Theresa May is still trying to bludgeon her Withdrawal Agreement through. Decoupling most of the material content means she might even succeed. It is a classic lack of planning coupled with overrun that we are witnessing.

By comparison, the EU drew up their plans, negotiating strategy and fall backs ages ago. I'm reminded of the slide that Michel Barnier presented back in December 2017. It listed the options of the day and the reasons that many of them transgressed Theresa May's Lancaster House red lines.

Barnier concluded that the only one of the options that didn't cross any of May's (framed as UK's) red lines was akin to a Canadian model. Failing that, it would be a fall into no deal/crash out with World Trade Organisation trading arrangements.

Fifteen months later, and already in extra time, the debate about these options has started, albeit with scarcely a reference to Barnier's chart.

The original basis of the Withdrawal Agreement agreement (before all the padding was added) was also drawn up in roughly the same December 2017 time-frame and even available ahead of Barnier's chart. It included the original 'back-stop' wording which has been modified back-and-forth since that time.

I can only reiterate that David Davis must have been asleep at the wheel through this entire period, or else there would have been time for some 'meaningful' discussions well before the road ran out.

I worked out that by around May 2018, the UK negotiation was a failing project with 'Game Over' lights lit all over the board.

It's the time when Barnier created another interesting diagram, illustrating a possible future Partnership Framework.

It talked about governance, level playing fields and a 'security of information' agreement. Specifically it added the EU legal basis for 3rd countries in EU programmes. That and the EU autonomous measures layers were two types of insulation that relegated UK to 3rd country status and quietly positioned that we'd be like anyone else trying to face off to the EU.

May eventually got rid of Davis, but didn't seem to like the replacement Raab's enthusiasm and sidelined him from the negotiation. Nowadays most people would be hard-pushed to even identify the current north-east Cambridgeshire based Brexit Secretary in a line-up.

By the time the Chequers variant of the Lancaster House red lines had been produced, the Department for EU Exit were faced with a huge economic conundrum. Most of the likely outcomes were disproportionately detrimental to the UK.

Crash out was the 8-9% GDP impact over even 15 years. Free Trade over the same time period was still 5%-7% worse off. The EEA option comes out less detrimental, but UK still loses its voice and vote over EU matters.

The chart also illustrates one of the topics that doesn't receive the prominence in much of the debate. That of worker migration. Even in the Referendum campaigning, the split between the leave parties meant that one could argue about migration blocks and another group could keep this out of their agenda. A variant of dog whistle politics where the person with the whistle is decoupled from the rest of the campaigners. It was another of the many distastetful elements of the Referendum campaigning.

Now we are watching more last minute scrabbling to get to an answer. The spectacle of Moulin Rouge, but where there's much about internal party politics. Events are being driven not for the 'will' of the people, certainly not for the good of the people but instead for personal gain.

What's left in the hopper? A few residual options including Barnier's original assertion. We can lose our EU Voting, lose our EU voice and achieve a locked down-trading relationship. It's worse than simply retaining the EU membership.

Here's a summary of the current UK-EU relationship models from the House of Commons library.

May has so far ignored what Parliament has been doing in their off-piste voting. I suspect she is keeping an opportunistic eye on these options, including the only one signalled green, which also happens to be Barnier's prediction from 2017.

Follow that route and we'll be using Barnier's governance chart as well. We can call the outcome Ineptitude Plus.

Oh yes, although yesterday's climate change protest from the gallery gives a bottom line that some other business is still being considered.