The UK - Pour encourager les autres?

One sometimes starts to wonder whether the entire mess, blunder and deep divisions of the past three years have not been contrived for the benefit of the EU, as a lesson and warning to the remaining 27 of what will happen to them should they dare to challenge the rule of the EU. Such musing is not discouraged today by Der Spiegel, normally the most illiberal and anti-Brexit of organs -

The EU Must Soften Its Approach

As such, the EU should take a step back -- it's in its own interest -- to meet the British at the halfway point. The EU no longer needs to fear that Brexit will find imitators if Brussels shows itself to be too yielding. The picture Britain has painted over the past three years -- the crises in government and parliament and the threat of the United Kingdom disintegrating -- should have a sufficiently deterrent effect. After more than two years of negotiations and considerable struggle, Brexit has become inevitable. It would be good for the process to finally be completed. Separating in a positive manner is the prerequisite for a reasonable relationship in the future.

Apart from a tacit admission that May's ineffective bodgers had previously been beaten into a wholly unequal deal by Brussels, it is also a plea for Germany not to be burdened with a hostile and belligerent Britain when she has just herself fallen into the most difficult of recessions.

My own view is that we will emerge stronger, renewed and reformed from the Brexit debacle - with some much-needed constitutional cleansing once we have a decent working majority in Commons and Lords, some democratic house-cleaning and electoral repairs. One reform must be to limit lawfare - the ability of the very wealthy to undermine democracy through the courts - and to restate the limits on the power of the courts. We are not the EU, and have no wish to surrender our democratic freedom to the corrupt rule of lawyers and the very rich. 

MPs must put a stake through the heart of the Robbins-Selmayr Treaty

There is a remarkable consensus as to what MPs must do tomorrow evening. The weekend's final spasms of government frenzy in seeking to terrify Conservative MPs barely lasted past Sunday lunchtime - the story of the Chief Whip stumbling across a dastardly plot in the cloakroom, as Boris Johnson puts it in the Telegraph, "like Jim, the narrator of Treasure Island, who overhears the conspiracy of the pirates while hiding in an apple barrel"

The call now is not just for MPs to defeat the Robbins-Selmayr Treaty tomorrow, but to do so demonstrably, driving a stake through the heart of Martin Selmayr's plot to split Northern Ireland from Britain.

After tomorrow? Who knows. Corbyn has declared he will call a vote of no confidence in the government. He is likely to lose it, but if by some chance he gains the needed two-thirds majority, it would mean a General Election on Thursday 21st February. Other desperate Conservative Remainers are doubtless plotting puerile public schoolboy tricks, with little notion of the fury they will unleash amongst the 17.4m, who have to date proven remarkably patient, well-behaved and responsible in the face of naked anti-democratic sabotage.

No. I think Boris has the sense of it today;

If the PM is defeated on Tuesday, she should come to the House and announce:

(1) that the UK and EU will keep the sensible bits of the deal, notably on citizens;

(2) that the backstop is coming out;

(3) that we are going to use the implementation period to negotiate a Canada-style free-trade deal, and withhold half the £39 billion until we get it; and

(4) that we are going to intensify preparations for no deal – in the knowledge that it is by preparing for no deal that we are likely to get a very good deal.

Not my favoured Clean Brexit, but a pragmatic 'well, we did offer ...' solution that I'm sure Brussels would reject, giving us a Clean Brexit by default.