Wednesday, March 15, 2017

There Was Never Going To Be A Deal

OK I don't know everything about everything, but I've long been puzzled by this fantasy that the UK could get some sort of pre-Bexit deal about post-Brexit. I never understood how that was going to happen.

The government has not carried out a full assessment of the potential economic impact of Britain leaving the EU without a trade deal, the Brexit secretary has told a committee of MPs.

The UK is being a giant pain in the ass and the rest of the EU doesn't have all that much reason to care. The UK has been playing "hardball" in their rhetoric but the EU response has rightly been "who are these little shits?" All the politics in the UK is about xenophobia and sticking it to those bastards on the way out the door, and the Tories have shown no sign of following any other path. And even the focus on a "trade deal" is wrong. Not that there won't be real economic impacts that will harm people, but the real harm is going to come to EU citizens in the UK who have no legal status (there is literally no process in place for them to obtain legal status), and UK citizens in the EU - of which there are many! - who are going to be fucked.