Saturday 15th July

‘Is it down to the lake I fear’ – as Haircut 100 once sang.  Possibly the worst rhyming line in Pop Music.  But maybe not.

More seriously, after the momentous Political upheavals of the last few years which started with the Scottish Referendum and have culminated in yet another Hung Parliament, exactly where do we go from here?  Is it really possibly that Mrs. May can hang on until 2022?  Is it even possible that she will survive the Brexit negotiations? We are truly in never-never land – we have a Prime Minister with no authority and which her own party blames for losing the last election, and yet they would rather keep her in place than replace her with a third leader in as many years.  The Government, propped up by a billion-pound bribe to the most Neanderthal of parties, limps on – arguing among themselves, with almost all the policies they fought the last election on ditched, and no clearly agreed position on Brexit even.  And it may be Brexit which finally breaks the back of this ragged bunch of chancers.  The mis-named (Great) Repeal Bill will attempt to transfer all the powers and laws and regulations previously and even now belonging to the EU into British only law.  Sounds simple, doesn’t it?  But the devil is in the detail, and there are millions of details.  So many in fact that the Government is going to try to curtail discussion on much of it, relying on so-called ‘Henry the Eighth Royal Prerogative’.

And while this three ring Circus is progressing through Parliament – the clock is ticking.  The EU will not even begin to discuss any other issues until Citizen’s Rights are guaranteed for EU citizens living on the UK.  For some unknown reason Theresa May is stalling on this, when she must know she really has no choice.  The most important issue of course is trade.  And beyond platitudes that she will negotiate for a free-trade deal with the EU, we really have no idea what that will look like.  And I suspect neither does she.  The EU will certainly not grant us anything approaching what we have now.  The best we can hope for is a transitional period of 5 years in order to sort out all the details.  But Mrs. May is polishing her best pair of high-heels ready to stomp out of the negotiations….

And where do we go from there….it will certainly be down to the lake, I fear.