The impact will be Davis-tating in Brexistential Breakdowns

Of all the people I thought I’d never quote, Richard Littlejohn was pretty high up on the list, like maybe fourth or fifth, but honestly, “you couldn’t make it up!”

And technically, they didn’t.

David Davis, head of the Department for Exiting the EU (DExEU) and a man who looks like a bad waxwork model of Nigel Farage that’s been left by the fire so has gone a bit soft and squidgy, claimed at several points last year that impact assessments were being carried out to determine the effect of Brexit on all aspects of the UK’s economy, which seems like a thing you’d expect the Department for Exiting the EU to be doing, right? Last December he told MPs that 57 assessments were being carried out, in June he said between 50 and 60 on a television interview, and in October he told a committee that Theresa May had read summaries of the impact assessments, which apparently went into “excruciating detail”.

However, he wasn’t actually producing these assessments, and so was ordered by Parliament to release them, some 850 pages worth of work. Instead of releasing them, David Davis, the head of the Department for Exiting the EU, admitted to the Brexit Committee that, well, they didn’t exist. At all. Absolutely no work has been done to assess the financial impact of Brexit on the UK’s economy.

So, technically, they didn’t make it up.

And on another technicality, Davis is looking like he’s not going to be investigated for contempt of Parliament (for that whole “telling MPs that studies are being carried out when they’re not” thing, which most normal people would consider “lying to MPs”), because technically since the reports don’t exist Davis can’t be withholding them from Parliament - they can’t “not be produced” because they don’t exist to be withheld in the first place.

Which I suppose is the overall theme for politics in 2017; you might as well lie, because who gives a fuck? Nothing will happen to you when you get called out on it.

Mind you, it was the theme for 2016 as well, back in the day when all those claims about breaking away from EU laws and EU oversight and taking back control, getting a better deal for ourselves and fucking off the EU completely were being made. Because Theresa May has agreed to EU demands over the Northern Ireland border situation, making some compromise with the DUP (who have ten seats in Parliament, not six as I mistakenly claimed last entry - I have since been flogged for the error), and coughing up the £39 billion “divorce bill” - the financial commitments the UK had originally agreed to back when we were still members of the EU.

Unfortunately for Brexiteers (who I still think should’ve been called “Quitlers”), it’s looking like this Brexit is going to be soft; I know there are some people in this country, like Bojo and Farage and Rees-Mogg who wanted it hard, they wanted it to be hard so badly, they just love it hard, they really do, in fact it’s probably what they think about to stay hard, (sorry, couldn’t resist) a soft Brexit involves us retaining access to the Single Market and the Customs Union, but in exchange sees us relinquishing our seats and subsequently any influence we might’ve had over EU rules, regulations, standards and tariffs whilst still having to abide by those rules, regulations, standards and tariffs, as well as ECJ retaining legal supremacy, and basically everything that Brexiteers wanted to take back has now been given to the EU.

In short, we’re not going to be in the EU, but we’ll still have to follow their rules, and in order to be in this worse-off position we’re going to be paying a shitload of cash.

At this point, why are we still bothering? Why not just admit we fucked up, take the grief on the chin, and return back to our desks at the EU Parliament? Because the hardline Tories might kick off? Because Farage might suffer a fit of apoplexy on his LBC show? Or because Murdoch and Dacre might have something to say in a private back-door meeting?

Or because “the will of the people” must be obeyed?

(pictured: probably not the will of the people)