Sometimes you really can't win - part 2.

Yesterday I pointed out a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation for politicians of every party all around the world on whether they should take the vaccination against COVID-19 at an early stage and be seen to do so.

(If they do, they're accused of jumping the queue: if they don't they're not displaying leadership and proving to people that it's safe.)

Today following the signing of the Trade deal between the UK and the EU, the largest bilateral trade deal which either party has ever done, we have another example.

For the last couple of weeks, up to about yesterday night, when it looked possible that Britain would be leaving the Brexit transition period at the end of this month without a trade deal the more vocal Remain supporters and Remain supporting newspapers have been reminding us at every opportunity that during the 2016 referendum campaign practically all the senior Leave campaigners, and particularly those who are now running the government, had said how easy it would be to get a trade deal.

Well, they did indeed all say that, so it was a fair point up to yesterday, and will doubtless be brought back up if anything goes wrong with the ratification process.

What a difference a day makes.

Today we have the opposite side kicking off and making the opposite (and entirely wrong) allegation.

Now the ultra-hard-line Brexiteers who actually liked the idea of not having any trade deal with the EU and are kicking off against the deal - before, of course, any of us have had a chance to study the detail and see what it actually really says) and suggesting that it's supposedly a sell-out. And some of them are claiming that "We never voted for a deal" and reinventing history to suggest that the idea that there might be a trade deal if Britain voted leave had never been suggested.

One of them actually posted on a friend's timeline today

"Strange how nothing was mentioned about a deal before the referendum"

Wasn't listening either to his own side at the time or the other side more recently was he?

It rather reminds me of the joke which was told in both Hitler's Germany (about the time of the Night of the Long Knives) and Stalin's Russia (during his purges.) This is the Soviet version - the Nazi era German version had SA members saying things for or against Ernst Rohm. 

Three members of the party find themselves in a prison cell.

One of them asks the others, "What were you arrested for?" 

Another replies "Yesterday I was overheard saying 'It's time to sack Comrade Popov!' And you?"

The first replied "Because today I was overheard saying 'I quite like Comrade Popov!'"

They turned to the third and asked him together, "And you?"

The third man lifts his face out of his hands and they both recognise him. "Comrade Popov!" they exclaim.

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