10/09/2016
UK officials,
we are told, "concede privately" that the Whitehall bureaucracy is still "miles and miles" from being ready to conduct detailed negotiations on Brexit.
This, of course, should hardly come as a surprise. You cannot pick up something as complex as this issue and in the space of a few months get to grips with the intricacies. And that must especially apply to a civil service that only works 9-5 for five days a week, and spends most of that time infighting.
And, in a further indication of the disarray,
we see Foreign Secretary Johnson confirming that he has abandoned his EU referendum promise to introduce points-based immigration curbs.
During the campaign, the now-Foreign Secretary vowed the Australian-style system would tackle immigration that was "completely out of control" and would "neutralise the extremists" on the toxic issue.
On Monday, though, Theresa May announced she had rejected the idea â and now Johnson has fallen into line, conceding that the "important point" is that immigration is curbed. He is less concerned about the exact form that control takes.
With Davis having to row back on his comments on the Single Market and the Prime Minister making it clear that there will be no "Brexit dividend" to hand back to the NHS, just about everything the Vote Leave campaign had on offer has drained into the sand.
However, some of the more prominent figures, such as Daniel Hannan, are still bleating round the edges, peddling their outdated ideas on international trade, while the free trade "
lobby" get more and more incoherent by the day, as Downing Street
disowns the latest effluvia from Fox.
To that extent, there is no longer any debate â just etiolated pundits restating tired positions as they drift further and further from reality, their chatter merging into a single cacophony. Noise is all we are getting because noise is all they can produce.
If it's any consolation, the "colleagues" are all at sea as well, as there is nothing coherent coming out of Brussels or other Member States. We might see some sense emerge in the
summit in Slovakia later this month but, on current form, even that doesn't seem likely.
Thus, although much of our focus on Brexit has been directed at the UK Government, it is most certainly the case that they are no better prepared on the other side of the Channel for negotiations than we are â and
just as capable of making fools of themselves.
Over here, most of the media output remains unreadable, and it is a long time since the politicians were saying anything interesting. In my view, the only sensible thing to do is batten down the hatches and wait for the current madness to subside, making space for sense to move in. But there is no sign of that happening any time soon.
