Heavy on fudge: M ay’s recipe for ex it disaster

WE WILL agree to something, some time. Is this progress? In the topsy-turvy context of Theresa May’s government it might be. In the real world where jobs, security and the impact on people’s lives has to be factored in, it is desultory at best. The new position paper proposes keeping the whole of the UK in conformity with EU customs regulations – not just Northern Ireland. This would continue until a permanent future relationship between the EU and the UK is negotiated. It appears that a fudge has been agreed just sweet enough for the hardest of Brexiteers to chew on.

The Irish Government stipulated it can not live with any time limits, nor indeed can Brussels. The price of having David Davis, Mrs May’s Brexit chief, and other rebels inside the tent may prove pyrrhic. He had threatened to quit on the grounds that the Brexit “backstop” plan did not specify a date when the deal agreed with the EU in December, would expire. She has now said that the “backstop” – arrangements to prevent a hard Border – will indeed end by 2021. The critical point is that a hard Border may have just become lost in the fog. For now the band has been able to keep playing, but we are still dancing in the dark to a large extent.

And EU forbearance is not inexhaustible. Mrs May has been forced to elevate settling a row with a minister in a hopelessly divided party above securing a long-term agreement with the EU. The result of the latest drama is that she remains half in and half out as far as Europe goes.

Previous female UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher once said: “I am extraordinarily patient, provided I get my own way in the end.” But time catches up with every leader, especially if they prevaricate once too often. Even the Iron Lady left Downing Street unceremoniously, in 1990. The never-ending Brexit saga becomes more like something out of ‘Alice In Wonderland’ or ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ as matters drag on. The war between Lilliput and the nearby island of Blefuscu immediately springs to mind. The interminable dispute was sparked over which end one should crack when eating a hard-boiled egg. At least the mythical egg was hard-boiled and not half-baked, as Brexit threatens to be.