I would suggest that both of these positions are misguided and, certainly, that they will need to change if we are indeed to enter a new chapter. We have left the EU, and for so long as that is the case there will be questions about specific regulatory alignments and divergences (if only as EU rules change). These need to be considered on their own merits, not in terms of the fact of them being alignments or divergences. In other words, they need to be decoupled from having left the EU. Equally, they should be decoupled from the possibility of re-joining the EU. If and when there is a strong and durable political consensus to re-join, that will entail a process during which there will be plenty of time for convergence (just as for any acceding country) or re-convergence. So long as that consensus exists, then divergence will not be the barrier re-joiners fear and Brexiters hope*. But for hard core Tory Brexiters, the loathing of Cameron goes far deeper than that. Even before the referendum, many of them regarded him as ‘not being a real Conservative’, meaning too socially liberal, too green, too metropolitan, too globalist. Before Brexit, that was still perhaps a relatively marginal view, but the Conservative Party now is very different even to that of 2015 or even 2017. Brexit saw most of the more centrist and socially liberal Tory MPs expunged or marginalized, and Brexit itself has now morphed from just being about leaving the EU into Brexitism or Brexitist populism.* If these issues mark the end of one chapter, that brings the sense of a new one opening. It would necessarily be a new chapter, not a new book, because it is inherent in Brexit that there is no end to it. That is, there will always be ongoing negotiations between the UK and the EU about their relationship in general, but also there are specific review mechanisms, most notably for the Trade and Cooperation Agreement, which will continue to refine, define, and re-define what Brexit means. Meg Russell and Lisa James’ book is an academic text, whose authors work at University College London’s Constitution Unit and thus bring a very high degree of academic credibility and expertise, and it is based on a major research study of ‘Brexit, Parliament and the Constitution’. As such, it draws on the Hansard record of parliamentary proceedings and a whole swathe of other official documents, secondary sources including other studies of Brexit and media reports, and a wide variety of interviews with participants in the events conducted by the authors (and others). These are all assiduously cited and there is an extensive bibliography, a compendious index, as well as a useful glossary of parliamentary terms. In short, it is a scholarly account but, for a Cronyism and Corruption Byline Times uncovers the nepotism that greases the wheels of British politics.

It is tempting to think that because we seem to be witnessing the death throes of this government, we are also seeing the death throes of this entire period of chaotic mis-rule and vicious division. It is certainly of some comfort that the Supreme Court showed this week, as it did over the original Miller case about Article 50 notification and the unlawful Prorogation, that some of the institutional guide-rails are still intact. That’s hugely important. And perhaps, post-election, the Brexitist populists will destroy each other and become so splintered between different parties as to keep them from power. But so much poison has been unleashed during recent years, and it has spread so far, even, now, extending to violence on the streets. Much will depend on whether the expected next Labour government, amidst all the other challenges it will face, will be able to reverse that spread. I am not hopeful, but it is the only hope there is. For the reality, of course, is that the “dream” has imploded quite independently of Johnson. It collapsed under the weight of its repeated encounters with reality. For that matter, even if, under Sunak, government policy is becoming more pragmatic about Brexit, that does nothing at all to stop the continuing damage Brexit is causing, damage still being assiduously charted by Yorkshire Bylines’ Davis Downside Dossier. At best, it means ceasing to add new damages on top of the existing ones. Her friend Diana, visiting for the first time, also responds to the house and the history it embodies as, in some almost indefinable way, expressing English identity but, for her, it does so in a way which resonates with what led her to vote for Brexit. Yet its middle-class signifiers are wholly alien to her. She lives, it seems, a comfortable, even affluent, London life, but her origins are working class and she carries strong memories of her now-dead mother, who had bemoaned the loss of the traditional white working-class community she grew up in. All that is for the future. More immediately, the Windsor Framework vote could be a sign that, as I put it in a recent post, Britain’s Brexit fever has broken. However, there are several questions to be asked about that. One is what now happens about the operation of the Northern Ireland Assembly, which of course is in no way resolved by the vote, even though a new opinion poll shows not just strong support amongst the people of Northern Ireland for the WF (overall 45% support, 16.9% oppose), but that even within the unionist community only 15.7% (though 22.8% of DUP voters) are opposed to it (and 45.8% support it, though only 36% of DUP voters). Wrapped up in that is whether, regardless of whether the Assembly is restored, the Protocol will go on being not just a running sore for some unionist politicians, but also, in being so, will function as a rallying point for Brexiters generally.The reticence was scarcely surprising, though. In making a statement putting heavy emphasis on the need to boost business investment, Jeremy Hunt could hardly mention that, just the day before, the Deputy Governor of the Bank of England had told the Commons Treasury Select Committee that the decision to leave the EU had “chilled business investment” ever since the referendum. Nor, in putting heavy emphasis on the need for economic growth, was he likely to refer to the Office for Budget Responsibility’s (OBR) forecast from April 2023 that Brexit will cause UK GDP to be 4% a year lower than it would otherwise have been by 2035, even though that forecast was explicitly left unchanged in its analysis accompanying this Autumn Statement. Sometimes, the profiles in the EM report are painful to read, as with that of Carol, who ran a niche bridal lingerie business in Devon. The last line is “Brexit was the final nail in the coffin of the business” (p. 12). Or that of Darren, who ran a specialist motorsport vehicle engineering firm in Cornwall and Essex. His profile concludes “our business is finished” (p. 17). These are affecting, personal stories of individual dreams shattered, whilst at the same time implicitly telling of damage to whole families and to local communities, often in ‘left-behind areas’.

If all that comes to pass, then it will be the prelude to the next chapter in which it will be possible for a future government, and political culture generally, to take the logical next step and ask the question: why doesn’t the UK join the EU? Argument Honestly held opinions and provocative argument based on current events or our recent reports.Democracy in Danger The newspaper’s extensive reporting and analysis of the various threats to democracy from populism, oligarchy, dark money and online disinformation. Brexit, too, explains the uselessness of the Cabinet which, as Rawnsley says, the Inquiry is showing to have “failed to act as a collective decision-making body and a restraint on a dangerously dysfunctional Prime Minister”. How could it have been otherwise given that, as Martin Kettle wrote when Johnson appointed his first Cabinet, it consisted of “mostly second-rate ideologues, many of them with negligible records of ministerial achievement and several of them with very dubious political ethics. All the positions of power are held by Brexit extremists. The rest are political hostages to the hard Brexiters.” Chris Grey is one of a kind: perceptive, brutal, forensic, eloquent and fair. Like all his work, this book bulges with masterful, well-judged analysis. There’s simply no better guide to Brexit.” Ian Dunt, author of How Westminster Works… and Why It Doesn’t

Procedurally, agreeing the Windsor Framework finally ends the Withdrawal Agreement negotiations. Of course, formally speaking, that occurred when the Withdrawal Agreement, including the Northern Ireland Protocol, was finalised in 2019 and signed in 2020. But, because of Boris Johnson’s dishonesty, negotiation of the Protocol effectively continued until now. This leads to a bigger point. For many erstwhile remainers, and certainly for re-joiners, the obvious solution to the damage of Brexit is to re-join the EU, or at least to re-join the Single Market and/or create a customs treaty with the EU. For them, any divergence from EU regulations is misguided in itself, and also an obstacle to future re-joining. For Brexiters, the converse applies: divergence is seen as a good thing in itself, simply for being divergence, and will make re-joining in the future more difficult. Frost, especially, has been vociferous in insisting that this political crisis was also a constitutional crisis, because it enabled, on occasion and most notably with the 'Benn Act' of October 2019, the House of Commons to take control of its business from the Executive. But this was absolutely consistent with the Constitution: Parliament is sovereign, and the Executive only has power to the extent that it commands a parliamentary majority. As regards ‘no-deal Brexit’ in the sense of no WA (the subject of the Benn Act), it did not. There are other cases where the UK will decide to follow EU regulation, as has already effectively happened with restrictions on single-use plastic, and the logic of market size suggests there will be many more examples. These may well include the reversal of some of the planned but postponed divergences, such as conformity assessment marking (the long-delayed UKCA mark). Indeed, the tone of Sunak’s government is already markedly less bullish about divergence in general than its predecessor, and more concerned with limited divergence aimed at specific sectors.

It is true that, although most of the violence came from the far-right, some of the Pro-Palestine marchers were also violent. It should also be said that some of the marchers used antisemitic slogans and chants that are utterly indefensible. It simply isn’t enough to say that these are being ‘misinterpreted’ when everyone must now know that (to take the main, specific, case) ‘from the river, to the sea’ is open to multiple interpretations. It is a fact that to many Jewish people, including some who are our fellow-citizens, it inspires genuine fear. So to continue to use that chant is to choose to stoke that fear. There’s really only been one major Brexit development this week, the vote on the Statutory Instrument to create the Stormont Brake as part of the Windsor Framework. If that sounds convoluted that’s because it is. This wasn’t about passing primary legislation, and there was only a short debate, and no amendments were allowed. It was not even about the entirety of the Windsor Framework (WF), although it seems that the government will treat it as such. Nor was there any possibility of the government losing the vote, as the Labour Party was pledged to support it. The Crisis in British Journalism Byline Times investigates media monopolies, their proximity to politicians, and how the punditocracy doesn’t hold power to account