After a good start (and I simply mean in the frequency of posts, not the quality of their content), as with most blogs, updating this has slowed down a bit. Partly that’s because keeping up with the Brexit news at the moment is so dispiriting whilst the second wave of Coronavirus is hitting us full-on and my wife and I wonder when we will next see our families in Wales, which is likely to go into a national lockdown this week.
However, the deadline for Brexit looms large, and any brief moments of hope in trade talks soon seem to be dashed with bluff and bluster.
This week the Internal Markets Bill is set to be debated in the House of Lords. Last week, the Lords’ Select Committee on the Constitution published a report that included, in its summary:
The Bill adopts an unnecessarily heavy-handed approach to reconciling the demands of free trade within the UK and the need to respect the role and responsibilities of devolved institutions.
The rule of law requires that everyone—from government ministers to the person on the street—be bound by, and entitled to the benefit of, the law.
A government that disregards the rule of law cannot easily restore it. … Any government that seeks to secure widespread compliance with the law must itself adhere to it.
Meanwhile, the government’s official Twitter accounts have been starting a new campaign for us to get ready for Brexit this morning.
The prize must go to the Home Office for “getting ready takes longer than you think.” Is this self-aware sarcasm?
Glad that is all sorted and we now know the exact nature of our future relationship with Europe. Don’t we?
It beggars belief that Michael Gove is still claiming that the UK “holds all the cards” in the negotiations. Who is falling for this claptrap? The same can be said for reframing the lack of a trade deal and falling back to trading on WTO terms as “an Australian-style deal.”
Talks continue…