Apocalypse averted ?

PM Theresa May has struck a last-minute deal with the EU in a bid to move Brexit talks on to the next phase. There will be no "hard border" with Ireland; and the rights of EU citizens in the UK and UK citizens in the EU will be protected. The so-called "divorce bill" will amount to between £35bn and £39bn, Downing Street sources say. The European Commission president said it was a "breakthrough" and he was confident EU leaders will approve it.

Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party, whose opposition on Monday led to talks breaking down, said there was still "more work to be done" on the border issue and how it votes on the final deal "will depend on its contents". Mrs May depends on the party's support to win key votes in Westminster.

The agreement also says "no new regulatory barriers" will be allowed between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK, and that Northern Ireland's businesses will continue to have "unfettered access" to the UK internal market - a passage thought to have been added to meet DUP concerns.

But it also sets out a fallback position if the UK fails to agree a trade deal. This could prove controversial because it says there will continue to be "full alignment" between the EU and Northern Ireland on some elements of cross-border trade, as set out in the Good Friday Agreement. The DUP would have preferred this not to be in the agreement, says the BBC's Chris Morris, and there could be some hard negotiating to do further down the line.

[How interesting to see that what was initially perceived as an important but minor sticking point eventually became by far and away the biggest point of contention !]

I don't believe it's possible to have a good Brexit, but there's Brexit-lite and then there's Brexit-Apocalypse. Currently, this is much more toward the former. We stay in the single market and the rights of EU citizens are protected. We defer (to some as yet unknown degree) to the ECJ on certain issues. A hard border of NI is avoided. We have to pay a hefty £40 billion over 4 years, but that's unavoidable, whatever Nigel may think. And Nigel hates this deal, which is a pretty dang reliable indicator that it's not that bad.

And yet... so much remains undecided, that the risk of the whole thing collapsing remains high. Praising May for this makes not a lick of sense : she bravely gave the EU everything they wanted, because there's just no other way to make progress. She remains weak and feeble and basically useless, but she's bought herself a stay of execution. There's no reason at all that these conditions couldn't have been agreed right from the start, so I wouldn't hold out much hope that the next phase of negotiations will be anything particularly brilliant.

The best news from this is that the government is not, despite appearances, wholly determined to get the worst outcome possible. The bad news is that the government are still a bunch of clowns.
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-42277040