May: Madame Fudge Is At It Again

There was excitement last night as Tory rebels planning to vote against the arguing mob that their government has become, were bought off by promises from an anxious May, as they jammed into her office in the Commons not long before the vote. Afterwards they thought they could take her at her word and voted with the government, enabling it to claim a victory. However it was not long before official and unofficial denials were being issued across Whitehall that any meaningful concession had been made. So now there is said to be simmering anger. Wow.

The problem is not actually who voted for what last night, nor what they will vote for today. The problem is that the EU does not know, the country does not know, the worlds of business, law, medicine, money and science do not know, indeed nobody knows, where the government is trying to get to or what Brexit will actually mean in practice. We in fact know less than we did at the beginning in June 2016. The reason for this historic state of universal don’t know, is because the government, whose raison d’etre is to know, still has no idea and whenever it gets an idea, it is either unworkable or it produces so much shouting around the cabinet table that it has to be abandoned.

So today the only thing we can know pretty much for sure is this. It may not end well. Not for anyone. But especially not for the government.