Brexitwatch: of cakes and decisions

 Another way of saying: 'I want to have my cake and eat it' is 'I am incapable of taking a decision'. Big political decisions usually involve making painful choices. Take Covid. The harder you lock down, the more you'll limit the spread of the virus, but the more damage you'll do to the economy.

The UK was late in imposing both of its lockdowns. Was this because Boris Johnson was incapable of taking the tough decision about how you balance economic damage against saving lives? Certainly, plenty of people complain about his indecisiveness when he was Mayor of London.

Brexit involves equally painful decisions. The more distant you want to be from the EU, the more damage you do to jobs, businesses and public services, and the greater the danger that you will break up the UK.

Johnson still seems not to have progressed from cakeism. He's still telling the dwindling band of people who believe him that we can have the benefits of EU membership without the responsibilities. The UK has tried demanding this for the last four years without success, but with perhaps just a week left to secure a deal, Johnson seems to have no fresh ideas.

Even if authoritarian nihilist Dominic Cummings has really departed, it will make the central decision no easier. What does the UK want: more distant and poorer, or closer and better off? With time running out, if Johnson continues to prevaricate, we will end up with no decision. And that will mean no deal. And that will mean we won't be able to have our cake or eat it.

Brexitwatch: how the UK can have its cake and eat it

As members of the EU, we are able to trade freely in the richest market in the world. We can travel to, study in, work in, and retire to 27 fairly nearby democratic countries.

But not only that. The UK has special bespoke deals on a whole host of things – we are not in the euro, we are not in the Schengen area. We get a discount on the sum we should be paying into the EU, we have special opt outs in the areas of fundamental rights and freedom, security and justice, etc. In other words, we are ‘HAVING OUR CAKE AND EATING IT’.

But Theresa May and the Brexiters plan to throw away this unbelievably good deal. Instead, they are demanding all sorts of impossible arrangements like being in the Single Market without Freedom of Movement or leaving the Customs Union but having ‘frictionless trade’.

To the (confected on the part of the better-informed) outrage of the Brexit fanatics, the EU has made clear on numerous occasions that none of this is going to happen, but still the UK has no plan B.

Even now, though, there is a way of having our cake and eating it. Cancel Article 50 and stay in the EU. If we are foolish enough to leave, before long we will be begging to be let back in. But never again will we get a bespoke deal as good as the one we have now.

*Thanks to Elkhart Public Library, Indiana for this mention for my book - 'Disaster!' https://myepl.org/epl/index.php/39525/