Phoney Brexit war is over – now it’s for real

AND so the phoney Brexit war has finally – and chillingly – come to an end.

Despite endless agonising, until this tumultuous week we have merely witnessed a public relations contest confined to television studios and westminster. Now we see a full-blown blitzkrieg – and its impact is truly disturbing.

Take British Steel. why is this industrial leviathan, a mighty company, in need of rescue from, of all things, the military pension fund of Turkey – a country in the grip of an authoritarian government?

Conventional investors are wary of British Steel, despite healthy global demand for its product. who, in their right mind, would buy an exporting firm without knowing what the commercial future holds?

Brexit uncertainty is now destabilising the UK economy, with a fall in GDP in the last quarter and a technical recession in the offing if it falls again in this one. Confidence is falling. Business investment is flat-lining.

Meanwhile, real issues such as tackling endemic violent crime – culminating this week in the shocking death of PC Andrew Harper – and social care reform must await a government not looking over its shoulder.

But when will that be? The real concerns of the public are taking a back seat as Brexit sucks the life out of our national debate.

Does this deep dissatisfaction concern our elected representatives? Hardly. They are more interested in getting back to the Commons tearoom to resume plotting. why consider ‘boring’ British Steel when you can play Fantasy Cabinet in a theoretical ‘government of national unity’?

A pitiful assemblage of Marxists, Scottish Nationalists, lib Dems and delinquent Tory Remainers propose this lash-up as a way of ‘bringing the country together’.

Yet its sole purpose is to frustrate the 2016 vote to quit the European Union. This is the real coup being planned over Brexit – not Boris Johnson’s determination to control the parliamentary timetable.

Summer madness has gripped once-sane Tory MPs like Oliver letwin and Dominic Grieve, who have hinted at a Faustian pact with Jeremy Corbyn to overthrow their own government. Now, we hear, they have drawn back. why? They’ll settle for Kenneth Clarke or Harriet Harman instead!

It’s all baloney, of course. Not least because even Mr Corbyn is not daft enough to cede primacy in a rainbow government. And what would this ridiculous project produce? Maybe years of debilitating Brexit turmoil.

Aside from this nonsense, there is a serious development. A leaked German finance ministry memo suggests Berlin has resigned itself to No Deal after refusing to budge on the Irish border. This could, of course, be part of the Brussels-london poker game. But it should give pause for thought.

If No Deal starts looking inevitable, it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Disloyal Tory Remainers should stop encouraging the EU in its belief that Mr Johnson is about to fold. He can’t. Because in this poker game, his entire political capital is stacked up in the middle of the table.

For him – and for us all – losing is simply not an option.