>> That means that the EU can put anything they like on the table and say
>> "take it or stay in the EU".
I'm not persuaded that the threat of a UK no deal crash out has the value as a bargaining chip that is being suggested.
It's no more than the 'respectable' version of the they need us more than we need them BS. The EU might suffer some collateral damage after 31-10 but it's a small biting thing in a large pool while UK jumps into a pond full of starving piranha.
May cocked up the negotiation with silly pre-conditions (out of Single Market/Customs Union etc and a robotic obsession with ending free movement once and for all) and by playing the control freak throughout the process. In the end she got a deal. One that was tailored to her need to keep the DUP onside hence the backstop rather than a virtual border in Irish Sea.
The NI border matters because the Belfast Agreement's constructive ambiguity. The Loyalists have a border, a line in the ground, to show they're in UK. Irishmen can treat it in same way as any other provincial divide on the island of Ireland. If it becomes a boundary between EU and rest of world that dynamic changes and you need infrastructure - even if it's only facilitative. The infrastructure is a red rag to Irish people in NI.
May's deal was perhaps the best we could get. Now it is dead. Boris has said so. He cannot bring it back even if he dresses it up as something completely different. He MIGHT have captured Rees-Mogg (and what made him thin using the front bench as a Chaise-Longue was rational) but the rest of the ERG will not let it pass.
Is there ANY reputable account of his progress to the deal he's after?
Ex Ministers like Hammond say he's doing nothing. The EU say much same. Cummings says it's a sham.
All Boris wants is to be the PM who delivered Brexit on whatever terms and however harmful they are to the rest of us.
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