Brexit 2020

At the recommendation of SF author, Charlie Stross, I've been following Ian Dunt on Twitter. He's an editor at Politics.co.uk and a vocal and acerbic commenter on Twitter.

He's just published an article called Brexit 2020 that attempts to explain some of the consequences of the British government's inexplicable decision to leave the EU. It's written in conversation format and is both informative and entertaining, in the way that watching a slow motion movie of a train derailment is entertaining.

I saw Boris Johnson on the telly the other day.

Really? That never happens anymore.

No, it was crazy. He just popped up. It was like a Big Foot sighting. Anyway, he seemed to suggest it was all really easy. We'd get it done in a year and then be free to do whatever we want.

Yeah, that's the official narrative. But the reality is very different.

Are you suggesting that the government is making a sustained attempt to deceive the public in order to hide the fact that they have an impossible set of negotiating goals and no competence to deliver them?

Yes, I know. It's hard to believe.

I know what happens now. You start talking about fisheries and regulatory alignment and customs procedures and then I gradually lose the will to live and have to order extremely expensive whisky.

That's right, that's how this works. So here's the thing. The government wants to get the Brexit deal negotiated, ratified and implemented in eleven months, before December 31st. They were entitled to an extension but have decided not to take it. That means the deal is going to have to be proper bare-bones - a completely stripped-down set of negotiating goals.

The article goes into quite a lot of detail. The main conclusion I've drawn is that the UK is well and truly fucked although it may be a year or two before they realize just how bad the situation is.