Nine weeks to go ...

Nine weeks from today, unless Article 50 is withdrawn by the UK or extended by unanimous agreement of all EU member states, Britain leaves the EU.

It is worth adding that, unless parliament passes a withdrawal agreement which is also acceptable to the EU, we automatically leave with no deal.

I agree with the Leave voter quoted by Sir Ivan Rogers who referred to crashing out without a deal as the “I have no solutions and can’t be arsed to think” option.

I accept - and said at the time of the referendum - that a lot of the things said by both sides were wildly exaggerated scaremongering and some of the warnings made by the Remain side were crying wolf. Unfortunately there IS a wolf - and it we have an unplanned "No Deal" Brexit the resulting disruption will have a significant cost in lost jobs and disrupted services.

The difficulty is that avoiding the default option of leaving without a deal is what Stephen Bush, writing in the New Statesman here, refers to as

"the central problem of Brexit – that there is no outcome to the crisis that doesn’t rely on someone deciding to take political damage to prevent a no deal Brexit. 

And the threat of no deal Brexit is sufficiently troubling that no side believes they will be the one that has to."

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