Yesterday was the last day, allegedly, when it would have been possible to arrange a post-Brexit trade deal with the EU. That's what Boris Johnson said a couple of months ago, anyway. Since then, if you don't just
love the Brexit saga as much as I do, the existing parts of a deal which had already been agreed have also been torn up, in a unilateral decision that the government admits
breaks international law. So the "oven-ready deal" that Boris Johnson was re-elected on, now turns out to be an actual step backwards. But that's old news. Where have you been?
Since any deal would need to be ratified by all 27 remaining EU countries, and this could take months to do, we really should have had a deal by now if we were going to have it wrapped up by the end of the transition period, on the 31st of December this year. Boris Johnson set the date of the 15th of October as the latest possible date for us to agree the deal, and
even the chance to get our all-powerful financial services involved didn't help resolve whatever bullshit about fucking fishing that they're still arguing over. So that looks like No Deal after all, then. And indeed,
today's news seems to back that up.
Of course, that might not be the case. In Boris's announcement, he talks about how great our "Australia-style deal" will be, meaning that our current Brexit, formerly WTO Brexit, formerly No-Deal Brexit, has been renamed once again. Maybe it's just bold-faced mendacity (there's a first time for everything!), or maybe, in fact, even he thinks that No Deal in a borderline apocalyptic economic climate is the dumbest idea ever. Perhaps all this posturing is just both sides taking a strong negotiating position and waiting to see who blinks. Perhaps this is all just the most exciting part in a game of International Trade Deal Bureaucracy Chicken. After all, you'd think there would have been a Brexiteer countdown with fireworks and 52% nationwide jubilation yesterday if it was really the end. I certainly didn't see anything like that. So maybe I'm wrong and there actually haven't been any recent developments in Brexit at all.