I don’t have much of an update for you and there’s some very interesting Brexit madness happening so forgive me if I have another of my political rants. But before I get to that, a quick weekly recap. Main news: it’s been effing cold here of late. We’ve had a few nasty overnight frosts including one that has damaged/killed my poor banana tree. We also had a fairly substantial snowfall on Friday, but it soon cleared. On Saturday night we hit an unpleasant low of -6. We had the shutters shut and the delicate outdoor plants covered over so we escaped any damage. It’s marginally warmer now but grey, overcast and in the single digits.
Workwise, I am all done with the tedious job from last week and have just done a quote for a quite large project that I hope to not get as it has “nightmare” written all over it. Matt’s been focusing on getting his big project for Abbey live and has a deadline this week.
Friday was curry night and we hosted. We had Manu & Mathilde, Gael & Corrine, and our new neighbours, Paul and Nathalie over. The newbies are from the Savoie and both seem very nice. He is a beekeeper (now Mazeroux’s third would you believe) and she used to run an equestrian centre – so they seem like a good fit for the village. We’d finally managed to decide on gifts for M&M to thank them for their help with the wedding, so presented them with those and that seemed to go down well. G&C took care of dessert: homemade banana and coconut ice creams and a pain d’épices (a spicy, bready cake).
We had a quieter Saturday which we used to get the garage all cleared out so we could bring the car inside ahead of the big frost. On Sunday we caught up with Rigit, who recently moved back out here permanently. They’re thrilled to have escaped the UK and have already made plans to have their two boys out for Christmas. Matt made a veggie lasagne with salad and garlic bread. And that’s about all I have to recount, so now onto a dissection of the ongoing fiasco affectionately known as Brexit.
There’s been a flurry of political activity over the last couple weeks that has proven highly entertaining to follow. The EU continues to play it cool during negotiations and has stuck rigidly to the agenda it published a year ago. Meanwhile, the UK government has repeatedly sulked, moaned, accused, raged, and finally, inevitably, capitulated. Following the negotiations has felt like watching a patient go through the seven stages of grief, over and over again.
All the EU had to do was refuse to allow talks to progress to the all-important 2nd phase covering the future trading relationship until they got their way, and they knew it. Sure enough, the UK has suddenly upped its financial payment offer to something reasonable, and is also making the right noises over protecting citizens rights. All well and good. That just leaves Ireland. The EU set today as a deadline for the UK to make enough progress for talks to move on and so today, the UK revealed its solution. There’s only one small problem: it’s utterly insane.
The Irish border issue has always been the best hope of killing Brexit, because it is quite simply impossible to resolve. In brief: the 1998 Good Friday Agreement (of which both the EU and UK are guarantors) ended decades of violent unrest and brought peace to Ireland. Among other things, the agreement led to the removal of the hard border between the North and South.
But the nature of the EU’s Single Market and the Customs Union necessitate a hard external border. Seeing as the UK has ruled out staying in either, this means an Irish border is inevitable. But it can’t divide the mainland, or we reopen the ugly wound of civil unrest. And nor can it be placed at the Irish Sea, as the unionist North would hate any move that distances them from the UK. It is fundamentally impossible to achieve a result that works for all the parties concerned. This was flagged up by remain campaigners long before the referendum took place, and yet still seems to be news to the current government.
So it was with eager joy (well ok, more schadenfreude) that I read the UK’s “solution” announced earlier. The border, they deem, will go at the Irish Sea and NI will follow a policy of “regulatory alignment” with the EU. This is an obfuscated way of saying it will basically stay in the Single Market and Customs Union after Brexit. A neat solution, except that the DUP (NI’s government) will reject any move that forces it into alignment with the South that and distances it from the UK. Its leader took to the air within minutes of the announcement to reiterate just this. Now, the DUP is small and Theresa May could have decided to proceed regardless, were it not for the fact that she recently called a general election and lost her majority. She was able to remain in power solely by forming a coalition with – yep, you remember correctly: the DUP. She however appears to have utterly blanked this fact.
So, far from solving the border problem, she’s quite likely just dealt her own government a fatal blow that will lead to yet another early general election. As an added giggle, she’s created a fantastic constitutional mess. No sooner had the words left her lips than the Scottish First Minister was quoted as saying “If one part of UK can… effectively stay in the single market there is surely no good practical reason why others can’t”. This was immediately echoed by the Welsh assembly and the Mayors of London and Manchester. And Liverpool. And to cap it off, the EU’s verdict at the end of it all was that insufficient progress has been made to move onto the future relationship after all, so it was all for nothing. It’s more slapstick than politics, but it’s great fun.