No Deal posturing isn’t what we need.

While more likely empty than not, last minute brinkmanship is the last thing we need in an era of uncertainty.

We seem to be blowing one way one day and another the other way on Brexit. What happened to that long forgotten oven ready deal? Well, as we all warned it wasn’t a deal it was the entrance door to years of bogged down negotiations.

Yes, this whole situation is a farce. Article 50 shouldn’t have been triggered until we had a clear exit strategy, and even now we don’t have that, we just have some anti-EU jibes from Michael Gove whenever something anti-government comes up in the headlines.

The most that can be hoped for at this late stage is a very minimal deal to minimise across the board tariffs upon exit. No Deal is, and always will be, the most damaging and least appealing form of Brexit. Why renege on any trade with your closest trading partner? It’s like throwing the toys out of the pram. That being said, on top of the current economic contraction No Deal would just be the cherry on top of a much larger cake.

What the government is doing is the same thing they did this time last year: run the clock down, capitulate at the last minute. I can almost certainly say we won’t have a No Deal outcome, unless the government prioritises saving face over that disastrous outcome. It’s in no ones interests other than disaster capitalists to have a No Deal; especially a No Deal without a plan.

Brexit is the last thing connecting the government to its new voter base, and they’re desperate to drag this out (could well backfire as a strategy considering the winning promise was Get Brexit Done) as long as they can draw energy for the culture war and sap political capital from it. Labour has finally said No Deal is a bad thing, which this leadership have kept schtum on up until now, but they are of course right.

If No Deal happens and there’s a clear impact on people, that’s when the bubble bursts, and clean break doesn’t sound so appealing. The results of the 2016 referendum should’ve been implemented in an orderly fashion long ago, instead we have a war of words, childishness on both sides (especially from Johnson and his cronies) and Tory backbenchers salivating about slashing standards and gutting our economy for parts post-crash out.

Alas, because of the people in power we now witness more ticking time bombs, more economic uncertainty, more confusion, more ugly division, and further fraying of vital diplomatic ties with Europe, not because of leaving, but because of how we’ve gone about it. The EU, being a neoliberal free trade bloc, anti-progressive in nature whatever FBPE people would have you believe (though no less progressive than this shower in government here), will now attempt to make an example of us in order to cower member states into acceptance of their doctrine. Overall, in terms of Europe, it’s a gloomy outlook.