notaclue
pfm Member
Everything you need to know about the current state of Brexit in one (long) devastating speech by Sir Ivan Rogers: https://pastebin.com/jMkxVUjs
As he says, "no serious thought at all had been given to these questions". That sums up Brexit. Leap before you look. Have a referendum when there's zero plans in place for a Leave vote. Trigger Article 50 when you've still got zero plans. Looks like we'll be leaving with close to zero plans too.
"But if we want, in areas , genuinely to go it alone – or have to, because we cannot accept the jurisdictional and dispute resolution implications of staying in agencies run at the EU level in which our voice is lessened – then we have to be going full tilt in developing that regulatory capability at huge speed, rather than assuming the EU is bound to give us both associate membership and a serious role from outside in policy setting, when the only way that can happen is if we shift our red line on jurisdiction questions.
That was promulgated as a red line when no serious thought at all had been given to these questions.
The fact that, in so many areas, we are obviously NOT doing that, and both regulators and industries are making it clear that they have no intention of replicating, at great cost, regulatory capability which already exists, is yet another reason why the EU side has long since concluded that the UK would not walk out.
Because it could not.
No amount of “be careful: we could still walk out, you know” sabre rattling makes the slightest odds when the other side knows that the day after doing so, we would be back pleading for continuity and for the ongoing delivery of, and access to, functions the British State has no capability to provide."