There is now a dangerous void of leadership and policy at the heart of British politics. Indeed it would hardly be an exaggeration to say that, as regards Brexit, the UK no longer has a functioning government. There are no obvious solutions in sight, and the outcome is completely unpredictable.

Boris Johnson and his cronies say the current multi-layered crises facing Britain are both nothing to do with Brexit and everything to do with it, thus exposing the incoherence at the heart of the project since the start.

It’s difficult to feel anything other than bewilderment and dismay at the events unfolding in Britain.

For at least three years – and in some cases much longer – Brexiters have peddled fantasies, half-truths and outright lies about what Brexit would mean and how it could be done. Ever since the 2016 referendum more and more of these have been exposed or debunked, as many of the posts and links on this blog testify.

Beneath a lot of sound and fury, the main story of this week is that Britain continues to go round in circles over Brexit.

It is difficult to make sense of what Johnson’s Brexit government is doing, or trying to do, as regards the Northern Ireland Protocol (NIP). I discussed the background in last week’s post, much of which remains relevant, but since then there have been daily, almost hourly, contradictory signals and reports.

What happens in the next three months, perhaps even the next couple of weeks, is going to shape the fate of the country for decades. If Brexit goes ahead, in any form, it will enact a profound misreading of the nature of the contemporary political and economic world and represent an unprecedented failure of British statecraft.

[This post will] provide a detailed analysis of an article written by David (now Lord) Frost in this week’s Sunday Telegraph.

"The first week of Johnson’s new administration has seen both speculation about, and the beginning of some answers to, how he intends to undertake Brexit. The outrageousness of that situation shouldn’t pass without comment."

In my previous post I made reference to the recent upsurge of Brexiter interest in GATT Article XXIV. As noted there, it was mentioned as a way of avoiding the damage of no-deal Brexit by Boris Johnson in one of the leadership debates. Shortly afterwards, his claim was debunked by Mark Carney, the Governor of the Bank of England (£) but he has continued to push it in interviews this week.

The end of the transition period was merely a staging post within a process that will be long with us, says Chris Grey.

Theresa May’s latest Brexit statement means nothing has changed except, of course, it takes us closer to the scheduled exit day with no sign whatsoever of when or how the Brexit chaos is going to be resolved.

Online event with Professor Chris Grey, author of ‘Brexit Unfolded. How no one got what they wanted (and they were never going to)’. Tuesday 11th January, 2022, 19:00 to 20:15.

It is apposite that Sky News are now badging all of their Brexit coverage with the label ‘Brexit Crisis’. For the political crisis which has been incipient since, at least, the 2017 General Election is now well underway, and will almost certainly intensify.

It’s tempting to ignore the government’s announcement, made in the doldrums between Christmas and the New Year, that it is to become legal to sell wine and champagne in pint bottles.

Professor Chris Grey’s analysis on how the budget aftermath exposed the costs and the lack of public consensus for Brexit. Some of the revived debate repeats the past, but there is a new context. How Labour responds now is crucial.

It’s been another painful week of shadow boxing and game playing that hardly begins to address the crisis the UK is now in, and refuses to address the choices that it must make.

We now know the conditions under which, for the second time in a fortnight, the EU-27 are willing to allow us to avoid, for now, the catastrophe of a no-deal Brexit. The British Prime Minister was sent out of the room whilst the other countries, each of whom had a veto, argued for hours over our fate and now they have decided.

In the years since the referendum, it has become a myth that the impetus behind Brexit was a demand for pure sovereignty, with any economic effects being irrelevant. It’s not true, because many of the Vote Leave arguments were economic, whilst the effort put in to discrediting ‘Project Fear’ shows that Brexiters realised that ‘sovereignty at any cost’ would not have enough appeal to win the vote.

In this Federal Trust video, Professor Chris Grey argues that relations between the EU and UK would improve significantly under a British government which adopted a less confrontational tone towards the EU. Neither the EU nor the UK would be well served however by a premature reversal of Brexit. Both sides would need to be sure that the UK was rejoining the EU for ever.

Britain will not enjoy special privileges just because it was once a member.

Chris Grey looks at the untruths, half truths and vague aspirations of the 102 page report on the benefits of leaving the EU, and discovers a ministerial power grab and a glaring failure to account for any of the costs.