I haven’t had much to say about the ongoing disaster that is Brexit, but a couple of articles caught my eye this week, so I thought it was worth making a brief return to the subject.

First of all, Vince Cable asks “Why have Remainers gone silent as the costs of Brexit pile up?” While I am less than convinced about Cable’s conclusions, he is right to point out that the country can’t start to deal with the consequences, or to find away forward, if everyone continues to pretend that Brexit isn’t a thing.

And Rafael Behr provides a reality check by pointing out that the Northern Ireland protocol isn’t the problem, Brexit is. Behr makes much the same point as Cable, that Labour (and, to a lesser extent, the Liberal Democrats) of being cast as unrepentant remainers that they continue to fall silent in the face of the Conservatives’ attempts to constantly refight the same Brexit battles.

It is a formula for perpetual crisis. The constitutional mess that Johnson has made of Northern Ireland is so far the gravest episode, but unlikely to be the last. The problem isn’t that the protocol cannot be made to work as written, but that it was written to enact a Brexit that doesn’t work.

The result is that we see Boris Johnson and his minions promising to get Brexit done. Again, and again, and again.

Brexit has happened. Britain has left the EU and the mandate embodied by the referendum has been discharged, and then some. It does need to be recognised, though, that this is not a trivial change and there will be many consequences from implementing such a change.

The country is not going to be able to deal with these consequences, however, until people start acknowledging that they exist.

When it comes to Brexit, One of the more perceptive commentators around is Rafael Behr. So it is worth considering the following remark:

For the true believers, a good Brexit is one that keeps the grievance alive; that makes foreigners the scapegoat for bad government; that continues to indulge the twin national myths of victimhood and heroic defiance. Measured for that purpose, Johnson’s pointless Brexit is perfect.

The Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) is designed as an ongoing negotiation, with five-yearly reviews and I have tended towards the view that now Brexit is “done”, the whole issue can be toned down somewhat. The TCA framework can then be used to allow Britain to make the best of a bad deal by slowly and quietly re-aligning itself with the EU.

But what if I’m being overly optimistic here? What if the TCA turns out to be the start of a lengthy deterioration in relations. If the Brexiters continue to be unable to get over the fact that they have now achieved everything they demanded, we could all be looking towards endless and escalating confrontations.

That said, it’s only a month since the transition arrangements came to an end. I can still hope that people become bored enough of the whole mess that no-one wants to hear the Brexiters any more. And, once the process becomes as dull as it should be, things can start to improve again.

But it may be worth preparing for the worst.

For years, liberals have warned about the danger of politicians corrupting the independence of the civil service. The inexorable rise of David Frost is a lesson to us. It shows there are civil servants who so want to be politicised that they yearn to become politicians, as long as they do not have to stand for election in the process.

— Nick Cohen on David Frost

The full effects of Brexit, now that the transition period has ended and the TCA has kicked in, are still only beginning to be felt. Every single one of them discredits the claims made by Brexiters, including the idea that there was no need to extend the transition so as to allow a genuine implementation period. There’s no point in them continuing to deny these effects, or continuing to try to justify the false claims they made. Now, it is their responsibility to work to mitigate, so far as it is possible, the worst of the damage they have created.

— Chris Grey looks at some of the many ways in which Brexit is coming apart at the seams .

I don’t really want to have a go at Will Hutton in particular, but his is the most recent article I’ve seen to make the same mistake as many UK commenters I have seen. After much celebrating of Biden’s inauguration and a look forward to what this means for the US and the rest of the world, he attempts to draw parallels between Trump and Brexit, claiming:

Instead of the opposition conniving in the belief that the best that can be done is to improve the terms of the “deal” over many years ahead, the political task is to assemble a similarly broad coalition to Biden’s and oppose Brexit in the same terms.

There are two problems with this assertion. There first is the obvious one, that he is not comparing like for like. Electing a government is not the same as signing — or abandoning — an international treaty. Elections are regular occurrences, treaties… not so much.

Personally, I think Brexit is a stupid idea, implemented stupidly by a very stupid government. But it has happened. All the opposition in the world won’t change the fact that Britain left the EU in January 2020 and the transition period came to an end on December 31st and normal trade rules now apply to the UK’s dealings with the EU.

Secondly, and more significantly, is the parochial attitude of much of the British press on display here. What would successfully opposing Brexit look like at this stage? It’s all well and good convincing a majority of the electorate that Brexit is a bad idea, but then what? I presume the UK would want to re-apply to join the EU.

And after having spent four years wasting their time dealing with a belligerently incompetent UK government, does anyone really think that the EU governments will respond with anything other than hollow laughter?

Brexit is done but the trade agreement is an ongoing negotiation. The best Britain can hope for now is for the country to agree to align itself with the single market with the aim of rejoining it and the customs union at some point in the not too distant future.

There is no point in trying to flog a dead horse. If you really want to rejoin the EU, your best bet is to move to Scotland.

What was Brexit like? America’s declaration of independence? A man leaving a golf club but demanding to still be allowed into the bar? Over the years, I went through a few analogies, but the one that persisted was of a married man who has for years enjoyed casually flirting with a work colleague. One evening he makes his traditional half-hearted pass, and instead of rolling her eyes, she replies: “Go on, then”. A month later, he’s living out of his car and negotiating through lawyers to see his children one weekend a month, and he can’t really tell you how it happened.

Robert Hutton looks back at the unrelenting mess of Brexit and notes just how stupid the whole thing has been.

And so it remains, with the UK government managing to come up with a toxic combination of compounded stupidity, wilful ignorance and stubborn refusal to face reality. After the (stupid) referendum, the Tories rushed into Brexit without having the faintest idea of what they wanted to achieve or how to achieve it. Or anything.

So here we are, approaching the finally final (we mean it this time) deadline for a trade agreement there is still very little likelihood of anything being agreed, and probably less that any agreement being ratified.

Britain has gone from being part of the largest free trade zone in the world to having a free trade zone smaller than the UK. And for what? To be as independent as North Korea?

Was it really worth it?