................The EU look on bewildered. Far from there being any sense that the British government has a clear and viable negotiating strategy that – as kept being claimed in the debates - the Commons votes might derail, there is
growing alarm in the EU-27 that no such strategy exists.
That same alarm is evident in the
growing evidence of business slowdown in the face of a completely unknown future, and its gleeful counterpart in the
pro-Brexit hedge funds betting on just that. It’s very likely that the average voter thinks that nothing much is happening except for irritating political rows: under the surface, the economic tectonic plates are shifting and really serious damage is now in prospect.
And the clock is ticking very loud now. A Withdrawal Agreement (which, of course, is a completely different thing to the Withdrawal Bill being discussed at the moment) is meant to be ready for ratification by the EUCO meeting on 18 October. Given that almost nothing will be done in August because Westminster and Brussels close down, that means that, by my calculation, there are now just 62 working days left.
If ever there were a time for political leadership, it is now. We already know
that isn’t going to come from the Prime Minister or from the government. What we learned this week is that it isn’t going to come from the House of Commons, either.