Day 6676: Europe: The Final Countdown. Again.

Friday:

Happy STILL IN the European Union Day. Again. They come around so quickly, don’t they!

People keep asking me “What is going to happen about Brexit?”

To which the correct answer is “How should I know, I’m a stuffed elephant!”

But let’s give it a go.

There was exactly ONE moment when Brexit could happen, and that was 23:00 on 29 March 2019.

And it didn’t.

Entirely thanks to the ineptitude of Brexiters in and formerly-in the Cabinet demanding more unicorns and less reality in their Brexit and through the religious intransigence of Brexiters outside the Cabinet insisting that this Brexit wasn’t Brexity enough, they missed the exit.

This is undeniably good news.

Parliament, and to an extent even the Prime Monster, have looked twice into the ABYSS of “no deal” and said “no thank you very much, matey” to the death and disaster that likely would follow.

So what do we do instead.

Well, Parliament is already off on its Easter hols…

No, that’s super UNFAIR – they’ve all been working absurdly hard to try and agree on nothing, and taking time away from the bubble might clear heads and let some fresh thoughts in.

But still, this extension actually takes all the pressure OFF The Prime Monster to get her agreement signed. And equally OFF of MPs to come to any agreement for it or any other deal.

And we have seen for the last six months that if there is an option to kick the can down the road, Mrs May will punt it into the longest deepest grass she can find.

Which unfortunately gives them all time to think about doing something else instead.

The WORST that could happen would be European Parliament Elections AND a General Election AND a referendum.

So you can bet that that’s EXACTLY what’s going to happen.

With the Conservatory Party visibly self-destructing before our button eyes, it will not be long before they do something… rather rash.

Pundits saying that the Prime Monster is safe until December because of the rules of the 1922 Committee… are overlooking that the 1922 Committee can just change the rules. We’ve already had the suggestion of “Indicative Votes of No Confidence”, which would be just as lethal as the real thing if lost.

Of course, Mrs May is a past master of seeming to promise to go, only to indefinitely defer the deadline – before the 2022 election, once the agreement is passed, when the stars are right. However, the even-by-their-standards frothingly outraged reaction of her Party to having to fight the European elections suggests time is very much reaching its fullness and the appropriates of her juncture is fast approaching.

The time limit that the Prime Monster has set herself is the 30th of June, though a calamitous showing at the now-inevitable Euro elections could truncate her tenure even further.

And to be fair, not a moment too soon. She has been absolutely the worst Prime Monster since, er, the last one, who is really to blame for all this mess. But Mrs May should have gone after the unnecessary election that she lost and only the unique combination of personal mulishness and no one else wanting to be left holding the ticking timebomb let her stay. Alas for Theresa, proving that she would rather defer Brexit forever than be holding it at the moment of detonation has removed her last purpose, that of fall guy.

I actually have this notion of Theresa May that, should she be ousted either by some confected 1922 Committee mechanism internal to the Tory Party or by a Parliamentary vote of no confidence in her government… she will still be Prime Minister long enough to send a Revoke letter to the EU.

It would be a final act of petty revenge, but she’d finally be doing the right thing for all the wrong reasons.

And she would tell us, from her Downing Street podium, that – entirely correctly – she was justified in this by the House having repeatedly voted down no deal and there simply being no time to reach agreement to do anything else.

She could literally save the country to spite the ERG.

But alas, that’s really too bold, to daringly pro-active for the Theresa we’ve come to know.

Most like she’ll just slink away to her field of wheat. Or what blasted heath is left of it.


So the Conservatories will need a new lunatic to take over the asylum. And the chances are they will replace the current one with the egomaniac second only to Mr Balloon in the annals of BLAME, Boris Johnson.

Not to say they won’t move heaven and earth – more like hell and earth – to stop him getting to the final two, because if he goes before the members he will win on a manifesto of bluster blubber and betrayal.

The alternatives though are not many. Either one of the swivel-eyed band of Mogglodytes, possibly Moggy himself. If Johnson gets it, he’ll split the party in a week. If one of the ERG lot get it, they’ll split the party in under a day.

Or there are the “moderates” – the deeply unlovely betrayer of human rights, Sajid Javid or the incarnation of the Banality of Evil, Jeremy the former Hulture Secretary. Either or both hoping to play the “John Major” of this scenario – winning from out of the bland – though neither have the shining charisma or raw sexual magnetism of a John Major. And that’s saying something. They are tainted with the Remain vote, though, for all the effort they’ve put into being more right-wing-than-thou. (Which, actually, was Mr Major’s problem too – he had to out-Thatcher Thatcher, hence all the insanity from railway privatisation to Back to Bedsocks, but that was last century's Tory tragedy.)

Obviously it would be a LOT better for all of us if they decided to look for fresh blood (no, not in the Zombie Apocalypse sense) and went to a fresher face, who could actually negotiate with Europe and build a national consensus again… no, I don’t see it happening either.

They’re going to pick another loony.

And then between two and twenty of the centreerists of the Dominic Grieve flavour will cross to the TIGgers (now renamed ChUKles) and the government will fall. In fact, a SMART Tory leader would jump before pushed, calling an immediate election rather than be humiliated into one.

Which would leave us with Boris Johnson versus Jeremy Corbyn. Which Johnson would win.

That’s not to underestimate Mr Corbyn. But against a robot with a manifesto that promised a death tax on her own core vote, Mr Corbyn still only managed to drag back Labour’s performance to really very awful. He’s not going to win back the forty seats in Scotland from the SNP that he needs to be anywhere like in contention for a majority. And his equivocation on supporting a People’s Vote or a Revoke Article 50 mean he’s frittered away a lot of the goodwill of the young people who believed Magic Grandpa was playing Seven-dimensional chess to stop Brexit.


The first thing to remember is that TMPM doesn’t actually HAVE a “deal” as such at all.

What she’s got is a Withdrawal Agreement, an acknowledgement of what we need to do to settle our existing obligations – mainly pensions for UK civil servants and MEPs, and projects that we signed up to and that went ahead on the understanding we were going to contribute – so we can settle our bills on the way out the door.

The Johnsonian notion that we can walk away from the Withdrawal and let the EU “go whistle” is obviously nonsense on stilts.

The first thing we would do after quitting with “no deal” is to go to Europe to sort out our customs, defence, security, common air-travel, fisheries etc etc agreements…

And the SECOND thing we would have to do is eat copious HUMBLE PIE as they wave the Withdrawal Agreement at us with an air of “What about paying for those dumplings you had, then?”

The real “deal” is the Future Trading Relationship, whether we are in the Single Market, in the Customs Union, in a Free Trade agreement or in the DO-DO of a no deal scenario.

“No deal” is the utter severance that is yearned for by the ardent Brextremists who laugh off the fears of “experts” and warmly welcome the notion of “trading under World Trade Organisation terms”.

This is because they do not know – or care – what that really means. Or worse, they do know and plan to make a killing by shorting the pound against the collapsing British economy. What it means is tariffs, schedules and border checks. Oh my.

Tariffs are actually the LEAST of our worries. The Government laid out its plans for a lot of zero INBOUND tariffs, which might seem good for people buying things, but they cannot fix the OUTBOUND tariffs that will make selling things to other countries HARDER, and with zero tariffs in place give us nothing to negotiate with when we try to change that. Disgraced former Defence Secretary Fantastic Dr Fox will remain a useless adornment to the government. So it’s not all bad news.

The schedules, though, are a very complicated set of lists and quotas that say how much of a thing we can import at a low tariff rate, how much has to be at a high rate, or how much we cannot import at all. Britain’s are all tied up with Europe’s, so expect a big fight over what our share of the EU schedule actually is. Which will obviously be helped HUGELY by having just TICKED OFF the rest of the EU by not agreeing the Withdrawal Agreement.

But the border checks are the MOST complicated, because under WTO rules you need to prove where the things you are taking across a border came from. And not just the whole finished product, but all the bits that made it up. And all the raw materials that the bits were made from first. And you have to stop lorries and boats and planes and check the paperworks. Which takes a LONG time. At the moment, in the Single Market, we get a lorry though the port of Dover every TEN SECONDS. Just how much of a delay do you think it will need to be before those lorries start backing up along the M20? Hello carpark-Kent. Hello food shortages and soon food riots. Hello people starting to DIE from lack of medicines.

And of course any country in the World – including the twenty-seven we’ve just magnificently flicked the V’s at; including Argentina who still want the Falklands – can start a trade dispute with you. Several already have, including the biggest economies in the World, China and our supposed best buds the Americans (make that trade deal great again, the Donald). You need teams of "experts" to provide "evidence" and agree "compromise" - all the things the Quitlings hate. Your free trade quickly gets very sticky, tying you up in knots for years.

One thing we DO know about Boris, though, is that he DOESN’T LIKE HARD WORK. Work like fiddly negotiations or difficult compromises or learning a brief when a woman’s life depends on it.

So why not try this for a Boris lark. He arrives in Downing Street victorious and announces, with another turning on a dime volte-face, that Britain clearly needs to choose its destiny again and there will be another referendum. He will rise magisterially above the fray. And with that vanishes inside Number Ten to make away with the silver and the secretaries.

And with one voice the nation cries:

JUST MAKE IT STOP

And so the nightmare is over. As long as Boris remembers to send the Revoke letter.

Brexit is dead. Or undead. At least until Halloween.

Now we just have to find a way to undo all the massive harms they’ve done getting us to this absolutely dead end.

Meanwhile, here is some Dr Woo…

Day 5882: The Prophecy

Tuesday:


This is a version of my entry to the “Britain in 2030” essay competition run by “Your Liberal Britain”. But because of their 500-word limit you lucky readers get about 50% more stuff!

Congratulations to winner, Lee Howgate, and all the runners up.

Now… I feel a vision coming on…

It is 2030 and Tim Farron’s Liberal Democrat-led government is seeking re-election after a remarkable if turbulent five years.

Sal Brinton, elected as presiding officer of the new Senate of the Commonwealth of British States and Nations, reflects on the three outstanding achievements of the Lib Dem Prime Minister.

First is the rescue of the economy from the disastrous protectionist experiment – the so-called “Trump Slump”. Freedom to trade and travel across 35 countries of the European Union has seen a flourishing of new ideas and new jobs. The young people who had felt their future torn away by “Brexit” rediscovered a new global sprit of Britain. The older generation have remembered that they actually liked going to Europe. True, the end of the pound was a high price to pay for readmission, and the process nearly foundered because of it, but the huge boost given to the economy by joining the Euro at such an advantageous rate has left many wondering at the “Project Fear” scare stories of the discredited Brexiteers.

Second was the healing brought about through the “Big British Conversation”, inspired by the way that new members of the Liberal Democrats in 2015 came up with new ways for the Party to review its goals and policies, which was the starting point for the constitutional reforms. For the first time people across Britain had felt that their ideas were being listened to, that they were in control of the outcome. Not everyone got what they wanted, but almost everyone felt the outcome was fair enough. The conversation has even been such a success that Ambassador Clegg is now being asked to help the Union roll out a similar process to rebuild the institutions of Europe.

Agreeing the framework for government devolution, instead of the haphazard approach that had resulted in a wildly differing powers from Scotland’s Parliament to London’s Mayor, gave people back the feeling they were all of equal importance to the country. Regional identities such as Cornwall, Wessex, Mercia, Yorkshire and Northumbria re-emerged when, after years of nationalist demands for an English identity, it turned out that there wasn’t one.

No one had expected Prince William to decline the throne, but no one was surprised when Kate Middleton-Windsor beat Tony Blair by a landslide to become our first elected Queen. Sean Bean had modestly laughed off moves to make him hereditary King of the North.

The axis of politics had shifted, from the old, backward-looking workers v capital left-right of the Twentieth Century, to the Twenty-First Century “Outward or Inward” of Liberal Internationalists versus Protectionists. The old two-party system had finally admitted it couldn’t cope, leading at long last to fair votes. While the right-wing Tories struggled on in alliance with former-Faragists in the newly-merged United Kingdom Conservative Party, some places saw up to four candidates competing for the label True Labour. Jeremy Corbyn remains leader of one of them. No one is sure which.

(As for Mr Farage, he was unable to take up the peerage offered him in the resignation honours of the last Tory Prime Minister as the House of Lords was abolished while he was still away on a six-month junket in America.)

Third, and in many ways most important, are the foundations laid for a future of opportunity.

Today, the Secretary of State for Sustainable Development Sarah Olney is at the ceremony to break ground on the first of four new fusion reactors, while Environment Secretary Liz Leffman cuts the ribbon on the latest tidal lagoon power plant and is able to announce that the Zero Carbon Britain target has been achieved. Health Secretary Norman Lamb will welcome the completion of the National Health and Care Service, and Home Secretary Caroline Lucas is widely praised for the latest figures that show implementing Liberal Democrat reforms to the drugs law has both cut crime and the number of people sent to prison.

On the World stage, Foreign Secretary Alistair Carmichael is at the United Nations getting them to agree to establishing no-fly zones and safe havens that will protect civilians threatened with war. He was right to resist calls to join further American military adventures, and instead we have pioneered the use of drone aircraft for delivering humanitarian aid not bombs. Meanwhile our forces in the Joint European Defence Initiative, led by Lord Ashdown, have now participated in four UN Peacekeeping Actions and rescued more than a million refugees from the Mediterranean.

Britain is getting back to work. British-made Jaguar-Tesla self-driving electric autocars are driving themselves to France, Germany, Italy and Poland. West Country Hemp is already established as a world leading brand. ARM holdings has bought out the remains of Apple, and are planning to launch a “retro” ZX iPhone. British and international cast and crew are filming Star Wars Episode XII at Elstree. People are working fewer hours but producing more, and Chancellor Ed Balls (International Labour) will announce the increase of the Citizens’ Income, sharing the growth in GDP.

We will build our success on openness to bold new ideas, to sharing our wealth, and on being part of the ever-wider family. This is now a Liberal Britain.

Alas, it’s only just over a month later, and this already seems shockingly naïve. The notion that we might somehow swerve and avoid the worst of Brexit and Trump Presidency has been shown to be hollow in the light of Theresa May’s Lancaster House speech setting out her 12-point plan for a hard-as-nails cliff-edge Brexit and a first fortnight from the new Administration in Washington that has seen a blizzard of executive orders and Constitution-baiting and plumbed new depths of deceit, from illusory crowd sizes to invisible walls to imaginary massacres.

Theresa May makes her plans if not clearer at least fractionally less opaque – and they are plans for a cold and cheerless tax haven Britain, lowest common denominator Britain without social care and a rundown NHS, where the Fat Cats can protect their assets and the just about managing just about can’t.

Now firmly in the claws of the Brextreemists, they drag her further and further to the exploitation right, seeming almost gleefully to desire the failure of our exit negotiations so they can go buccaneeringly alone, quite wilfully ignorant to the fact that we can’t just “adopt WTO tariffs” without the agreement of the WTO’s 169 members, one of whom is the EU.

And our non-opposition Opposition of Jeremy Corbyn is three-line-whipping his Labour rabble to support the Tories as Theresa takes her suicide-leap into the arms of the odious Trump.

And as Boris “punishment beatings” Johnson tells us that it trivialises the holocaust to compare Theresa’s fawning love-in with the man who has placed an actual White Supremacist in charge of America’s security with the rise to power of the 30’s iteration of Fascism, satire lies weeping and bleeding.

So what use is a fluffy little homespun future, when all about us the darkness gathers and the very worst of human spirit is in ascendance? All the use in the world, if it gives you hope.

Find hope where you can.

History sometime rhymes in odd ways. After the Scottish Independence Referendum, the Nationalists were galvanised and swept to stunning victories in Holyrood and Westminster elections. I think a lot of people assumed the EU Referendum would be the same. Except the SNP lost that Referendum, whereas the Farragist Nationalists won on Brexit. And as in Scotland, oddly rhyming, it is the losing side that is now winning.

Support is coming back to the Liberal Democrats. Sometimes in very surprising places. We understand the big swings to the Gold Party in Remain areas like Witney and sensationally Richmond Park, but there are some even bigger swings in those Labour/Leave heartlands of Sunderland and Rotherham. This cannot just be a surge of Remainiac votes; there’s got to be some change of mind behind this.

Perhaps what united and energised the people in Scotland wasn’t crude “nationalism”; it was a sense of a bright future ripped away.

Perhaps what’s behind this change of mind, is a sense that this is not the change people voted for.

Find hope where you can.

Stay strong, my fluffy lovelies, stay safe. Resist the urge to fight hate with hate. Though the darkness closes around us, there is still a hope of light. We will build that Liberal Britain. One day.

Day 5769: Marmite Wars are Merely the Beginning

Monday:


Today Captain Clegg launched his third pamphlet on the challenges facing the UK due to Brexit. This one is about food and drink.

Nick Clegg at the National Liberal Club

If you’re still watching POLDARK on the BBC you will know it’s a tale of noble-but-impoverished workers of mine and land, ground down by the machinations of sinister bankers who manipulate the laws and the local dimwit Tory MP for their own ends, and so must turn to smuggling to get goods past the exorbitant import tariffs.

What you might NOT realise is that this is a BOLD sci-fi drama set in the DISTOPIAN post-Brexit FUTURE! With occasional topless scything.

And the reaction was basically terrifying. (To Brexit, not the topless scything!)

That’s not the position of Captain Clegg – who was at pains to point out that we should definitely be trying to save people from their fears by at least agreeing a Norway-style EEA agreement that maintains our trading links.

No, the fear was present in the questions arising, questions from small farms, from small retailers – corner shops and newsagents – who are all already staring down the barrel of disaster as the collapse in the pound sees their prices soar; the sort of everyday working folk whose concerns for their businesses and livelihoods and families are dismissed from the ivory towers of Conservatories like Jacob Rees-Mogg who’s never had to do a day’s work in his life and puts down the questions of ordinary people as “just more Project Fear”.

And another very good question came from the Commonwealth countries who can see their gateway deals to the EU via the UK collapsing and WTO trade tariffs of 40% on chocolate or 50-60% on beef and lamb being imposed by the careless diktat of Liam “Fantastic Dr” Fox, disgraced former Defence Minister and not-yet-disgraced (‘96 days and counting’) International Trade Minister.

Across the continent, the papers are not full – as Cap’s Nick put it – of the cunning of Mr Fox, the honesty of David Davis or the diplomacy of Boris Johnson. No, our friends and allies are instead AGHAST at the language and occasional downright xenophobia coming out of this chaotic Tory government, particularly things like the conference speech of the “Go Home” Secretary, Ms Green Amber Rudd. Less of a dog whistle; more of a traffic light stuck on stop!


Prime Monster Theresa May (or May Not) holds out against delivering ANY answers beyond Brexit means Brexit means a slap on the wrist for ministers who dare to speak the unspeakable, but insists that she has the power to Invoke Article 50 without taking a vote in Parliament. Talk about “taking back control!” Will those Tories – David Davis, John Deadwood, Peter Bone, Rees-Moggy? – who made such a BIG THING of Parliamentary Sovereignty call her to account? Or will they sell their principles in a heartbeat?

MPs were EXPRESSLY told that the Referendum would be only ADVISORY – or else they might have voted for more stringent checks, such as a two-thirds majority, or other thresholds – and those Brexiteers who are trying to say that in passing the referendum BILL Parliament has already voted on Brexit are clearly trying to take away the democratic and sovereign rights of Parliament.

Noted thinker A. C Grayling is writing to every MP to ask them why they are allowing this, and that they should demand a debate AND VOTE on the issue.

It is, after all, their DUTY to “take back control”.

It is clear that unchecked, Mrs Maybe’s unelected administration will see us BOUNCED into the most CHAOTIC TORY BREXIT!

Unilever and Tesco may have come to an accommodation that sees the Marmite back on our shelves, but that’s far from the end of it.

We currently SELL more than £18 billion of food abroad, one of our biggest export industries, and two thirds of that goes to the EU. Tariff and other barriers, like regulations or defining chocolate to be only high cocoa solids, that would exclude British chocolate altogether, will more than eliminate any benefits of the cheaper pound. And THEN we have to compete with the highly subsidised EU food production because THEY’LL still have the much-derided Common Agricultural Policy that WAS pouring billions into OUR farms.

But also we EAT more than we can GROW, so we have to BUY IN more than 25% of the food we need, and more than 70% of that is from Europe.

Companies importing food are going to face a choice of three options: put up prices – difficult in a cutthroat market with discounters already at their heels; cut into their own profits – which are already very tight, especially for small firms that import ingredients to make into prepared foods; or stop stocking certain lines altogether – the Marmite option.

For the moment, big importers will have their prices protected – either by long-term agreements with their suppliers or by insurance (called “hedging”) that will cover the higher cost of buying stuff with a pound that is worth up to 18% less.

But small companies who can’t afford big insurance are being hit with those choices already.

And even the bigger companies, their contracts will run out and, as Tesco discovered, new agreements will need to be made; those insurance policies are to smooth out short-term the ups and downs of the currency markets, not to protect long-term from a major devaluation. And then the higher prices will have to be paid.

In the next year to two years we will see a (first) big spike in food inflation, and that will hit the least well off the hardest.

We need to work RIGHT NOW to protect against an even bigger hit from collapsing out of the Single Market.

As Master Yoda so very nearly said of Bojo’s foreign policy: Victory? There was no victory. Begun, this clown war has.

Steve Bell in the Grauniad

Day 5714: Brexit Means Batshit or Brexit means Bullshit

Tuesday:


“Brexit means Brexit,” says Prime Minister Theresa May. But what does Brexit means Brexit really mean? You might as well say Wiff Waff means Wiff Waff, for all the facts it tells us.

The dilemma… or trilemma or quadlemma… that faces Mrs May is: how does she satisfy all the different Leaver’s different reasons? And of course she can’t. They’re utterly irreconcilable.

The real choice facing the Prime Minister is whether she faces down that section of the voters who will scream betrayal most loudly or she accepts trashing the economy to satisfy people who voted for magic unicorns.


Look, either you can determine all your own rules. And no one will do business with you. Or you can compromise and have trade.

So either you are batshit crazy. Or you were bullshitting when you said we would “take back control”.

Here’s why:

People who voted Leave will give you one of a dozen different reasons for why they voted – almost all variations on the cry of “*I’m* not a racist!”.

(This refusal to admit that immigration was the big driving force of the Leave Campaign that is the sort of reprehensible moral cowardice that sees Labour’s Gisela Stewart happy to parrot the lies of Farage and Gove and then wring her hands at the entirely predictable (and indeed predicted) outcome.)

“We have valid reasons,” they say.

…Actually they mean “we have morally acceptable arguments” (not like the racists).

For an argument to be valid is has to be true:

• “Europe stops us barring foreigners from entering the country” is true, but morally reprehensible.
• “Europe is holding us back from free trade” is invalid because it’s nonsense.
• “Europe prevents us from cutting workers’ holidays and doubling their working hours” is true but repugnant, and not the sort of thing that wins public support for your buccaneering free marketers.
• “We should be making our own laws” is invalid because the law needs to be the same for everyone if it’s going to work.

“We should make our own laws”, is one of those big assertions that Leave say won them the campaign. It gained a lot of traction in the referendum. And it’s total nonsense.

The law must apply equally to both sides in any agreement. Like, say, a trade treaty. If one side is going to say they can change the law (possibly on a whim) what is in it for the other side?

Suppose your next door neighbour says that they should make up the laws that govern their house. And they decide they don’t agree with those pesky laws about noise after midnight. Or fly tipping. Or that property is theft?

That’s just the same as when we get, say, UKIP’s Suzanne Evans (on Radio 4’s Westminster Hour) saying we don’t need follow the rules in Article 50 at all; we should just change the law in our own Parliament to leave. Reneging on the Lisbon Treaty would mean that no country on Earth would trust us with those “free trade agreements” that the likes of Ms Evans say it will be so easy to make.

There’s a section of the Leave vote who might be completely happy with that, with no trade with Europe at all. For them, the only satisfactory outcome will be to slam the door to the EU on our way out.

It’s probably not a large section, but you can bet it’s going to be a very, very noisy one.

And they are never going to be satisfied. Because that sort of isolationism is not going to be acceptable to anyone who wants to be able to buy bananas or avocados or for that matter petrol.

For absolutely anyone else, anyone who wants to be able to buy things from abroad and sell our stuff there too, then you are going to have to compromise. Starting by agreeing on the law – the rules – for your treaty.

What you cannot get is the completely disconnected from reality version where we want lots of trade with everyone… but they all agree to follow our rules, the sort of magic thinking represented in the Cabinet by “Fantastic” Dr Fox, the man already picking a fight with the empty room that is Boris Johnson’s Foreign Office.


Two months have passed since THAT vote. The Prime Minister has been able to take a holiday. Labour continue to stage their what can hardly be called leadership election. And thankfully, neither the World nor the British economy have ended in the meantime. In fact we have had positive economic figures for July: retail sales are up and unemployment is down.

But it’s early days. We haven’t actually done anything irreversible yet. It’s still difficult to see how we will not get a spike in inflation caused by the fall in the value of the pound – particularly once fuel bills start to go up in winter. And it’s an awkward question but where is the investment in jobs and trade going to come from, now that companies are looking more to the continental mainland for their European bases?

So far, Theresa May is Wile E. Coyote, running on empty air. We need to know whether what she’s got in her handbag is a parachute… or an anvil. Ideally before she looks down and notices the economic gravity.

We don’t want a recession. So what are the government doing to prevent a bump in the road turning into a shock to the system? Things have changed (or the vote was meaningless Miranda Hart look) so the government needs to say what changes it will make in response. Complacency and inertia won’t look so good with hindsight if things do go pear-shaped.

Putting off telling us what “Brexit” will mean stops the government telling us what actions they will take. “Brexit means Brexit” is actually damaging.