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Crikey. I haven't really been following recently - gotta admit I've kind of got a bit bored with it all and I'd rather get on with my life at the moment. Plus I'm living in France and there's not much I can really influence/do about it all from here.... So reading your post gives me some pause for thought, and a bunch of questions.
Is what you say about Johnson potentially U-turning (again) in the summer a realistic scenario?
What's the viewpoint like from outside the London/SE bubble?
I'm vaguely thinking of coming back to the UK to do some (at least part-time) work... should I hold off on that, or should I continue with that idea?
Ok, so the last one isn't really Brexit related, it's a very personal thing. But I'm finding it hard to really judge the atmosphere at the moment, or the potential political realities.
Also, I have to say that the political future doesn't seem any/much brighter in France than it does in Blighty: Macron has taking a hammering in recent months (having already been pretty unpopular) and lots of people talk about the fact that come the next election, we're quite likely to be seeing a resurgence of the extreme Right (again) - with a probably more decent chance of getting into power than they've ever had in living memory. Scary.
d0cA-
What's the viewpoint like from outside the London/SE bubble?
Living in Northern Ireland, let's say people here aren't too impressed with Brexit to begin with, the hard unionists are pissed off with the border in the Irish Sea, most people just want local government to be good and they aren't looking forward to economic damage and of course others see it as a chance to push unification to the front of the agenda again, so all in all...not really helpful at all here.
This won't affect you, but Tories are happy to keep pushing the immigration blame game and dogwhistles (treating the country too much like my own? tx Boris...) and don't do much about bigotry against immigrants.
The minority of shits that exists in every country really has been emboldened by Brexit, the Windrush people are still waiting on compensation, they know 10s of thousands won't get Settled Status in time and become "illegal" but don't care.
Of course, it depends where you want to live in the UK, Belfast isn't bad but some people really are getting a hard time so may be worth investigating if you do want to go live somewhere and don't want to be around it. Or maybe you are happy to tell them to shut up as it is unbecoming and not British per the Life in the UK book ;)
JWestland
Gove's announcements yesterday that we will have the full range of customs checks shouldn't be a surprise - that was nailed on since 2017 when we ruled out CU and SM.
However, it seems to have been taken by many as a surprise - which is hard to find fault with as we still don't see the massive infrastructure projects at every channel crossing that would be required to actually do the checks required, and the associated hiring and training of customs agents, border staff, and the procurement of suitable IT systems to support all of this.
Which has to lead to the conclusion that this is all piss and wind, and the U turn on a transition extension is already baked in.
Which then leads to the question of whether Johnson will be able to rely on Labour votes to change the law in early summer to allow him to ask for said transition, or whether we are on for another GE in August after Johnson is ousted by the ERG in the fight over the transition extension.
Finally, will we be having a new Queens speech at the same time as desperately trying to find a new legal vehicle that would allow a transition extension to work, given that (amongst many others) Pascal Lamy has stated that once A50 expires there is simply no legal framework that could allow transition to be extended?
From an EU perspective making our current transition period the status-quo up until the next budget cycle in (I think) 2027 would be a result - we pay in, nothing changes, but they never have to see another Brexit party MEP shitting themselves in the European Parliament.
From our side there are very significant problems with this - we actually end up in the situation that Brexists told we we were in before we left, all of the duties, none of the power. Literally a rule taker, where before we were one of the more influential members (although out of the Euro we were never going to be at the top table).
It's looking possible that the Brexists have engineered entry into the situation that they told us we were in, and had us vote to escape.
Still, as long as we don't change the off-shore tax regulations they can find solace with their money I suppose.