The most important Brexit event of the week came and went with relatively little fanfare, yet it marks a significant moment.

'The Brexiters have no more idea in private than they do in public about what they are doing. Predictions based upon their concealed intent project on to them a competence they simply don’t possess.'

A recurrent claim of the Leave campaign during the 2016 EU referendum was that it would be easy for the United Kingdom, once it had decided to leave the EU, to agree with the larger countries of the Union, notably Germany and France ... But the misconception was illuminating for its misjudgement of the European Union and the solidarity between its members.

The delusion that the Brexit negotiations are ongoing, as discussed in my previous post, continues and in doing so becomes ever more surreal.

The CBI has recently called for a new trade deal with the European Union and Rishi Sunak saw himself forced to rule out the Swiss option. These are just examples of how little the UK understands how the European Union and the single market work. Nicholas Sowels lists many of the erroneous assumptions Britain has made ... ignoring that the four freedoms of movement ... are not just abstractions.

'...it is a good time to take stock of the Gibraltar strand of Brexit and how that intertwines with the Brexit saga and, ultimately, to the extent that it does represent a certain kind of completion, a good time to take stock of Brexit itself.'