Anyway, I was skimming through the Daily Mail today. Yes, I know the old Lord Salisbury quote about the Mail being for those who can read but not think. There is a lovely piece by John Humphreys about the dawn chorus that greets him as he leaves his house to go to work at this time of year. John's favourite is the blackbird and he waxes lyrical about what he thinks should be Britain's favourite bird, though in a poll a while back the robin got the accolade.
Humphreys's column reminded me of my recent blog Blackbird Singing In The Dead Of Night (18 May). Like me, Humphreys noted that each blackbird can have a varying but recognisably individual song. And I'm glad I'm not the only one who whistles to a blackbird to see if he will reply....
Not that I am suggesting I am the first person ever to write about blackbirds of course. Or link the timing of the dawn chorus to the well known song from the Beatles pantheon. But hang on, what's this? In Richard Littlejohn's Mail column on 25 May he said "...we won't get an acceptable deal from the EU negotiators unless Mrs May is prepared to walk away, Renee", referring to the Four Tops song Walk Away Renee. Readers will know I've been using that song as an analogy for what should at least have been thought of as a contingency in the Brexit negotiations. I've been doing this since my blog of 17 September 2017, Don't Walk Away Renee? when I said "If they won't talk like grown ups it's time to Walk Away from Rene. For the purpose of this blog it's unfortunate that none of the negotiators appears to be called Rene, but never mind!" (I had in mind the sitcom, 'Allo 'Allo! of course, which still seems apposite).
Meanwhile Adam Boulton, in his Sunday Times column on 27 May, We can check out of Hotel Brussels but the truth is we can never leave referenced, though not explicity, the Eagles song Hotel California. Which I first did in my blog of 8 December 2017, the day after the joint report on the first phase of the negotiations was published, when I could immediately see the risk of us staying, as Boulton said in his column this weekend "entangled". Indeed, my blog was called Reasons to be cheerful - or entangled? as I had, as usual, a soundtrack going through my head with Ian Dury and Genesis on the playlist along with the Eagles.
And in my blog As I was saying - entangled or walk away? (21 May) I noted that Dominic Lawson's Sunday Times column of the previous day was a better crafted version of the same two blogs of mine from last September and December.
Now I am not, for a moment, suggesting that Humphreys, Littlejohn, Boulton or Lawson have ever read my humble blog. But isn't that strange?
More importantly, Boulton said that, if only by inertia, the government is leaving itself little option but to stay entangled with the EU. After all, it was last year that Phil Spreadsheet Hammond wouldn't sanction spend on contingency customs arrangements, meaning that we won't be ready for no deal so we can't realistically threaten to walk away (d'oh!). In comparison, the Electoral Commission is planning contingency spend of £829,000 to prepare for our participation in the European Parliament elections which will happen in EU countries 8 weeks after we are due to leave in 2019. Whether any of this money would need to be spent before 29 March 2019 isn't clear. It seems that we can make contingencies for what we didn't vote for, but not what we did.
I'll leave the penultimate word with Boulton (I always get the last, it's my blog for pity's sake!). He notes that Sir Ivan Rogers, who quit in January 2017 as the UK representative in Brussels, has predicted that the EU will refuse to agree a definite end date to the transitional arrangements, including the Irish backstop of the UK maintaining "alignment" if it is invoked, because "as the Swiss always correctly observe: no negotiation with the EU ever ends". Remember those words, says Boulton, which he says may come to epitomise Brexit, "no negotiation with the EU ever ends".
I fear it is all to easy to envisage that eventuality. Because it wouldn't just be the EU side dragging heels and playing it long. Theresa May has been doing the same. And whatever we do get agreed won't be liked by all. So there will be many lobby groups campaigning to change this or that aspect of the deal. For example, one can imagine the Brexiteers campaigning out meant out if we end up staying in a customs union or the single market. Indeed, I may be with them! Conversely, I firmly expect there to be a vocal minority campaigning for us to rejoin the EU for the rest of my days.
My fear all along, shared in my tortured blogs of June 2016 in the run up to the referendum and why I pusillanimously voted Remain, was that the transition would be extremely long and difficult. Indeed in my blog of 21 June 2016, Reason To Believe, just before the referendum I said "the transition weighs heavily on me". Though I accept I didn't predict it would be infinite (I was predicting 2-5 years). Yet now Littlejohn wakes up to this prospect, saying somewhat indelicately that it's taking longer to get out of the EU than to get rid of Hitler.
On a more positive note - and one that is a reminder that the really important things in life go on - here is "my" blackbird, giving it large in his time shared fir tree and at his other nearby vantage point, the very top of a small beech tree, just in my eye line from my patio:
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