October 2018 — what was meant to be the final Brexit negotiation meeting is about to start. Yet no deal is in view — the Withdrawal Agreement, the essential prerequisite to any trade deal, is an intractable problem. Everyone has an opinion but few can explain in plain English how all the choices hang together. The details are truly labyrinthine, but in broad strokes the Brexit quandary can be easily described. Here is one way, with thanks to Yogi Berra and Lewis Carroll…

This way

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”

Beneath the emotions, Brexit is a game of preferences and choices. That’s not to diminish how I, you or anyone feels, or to trivialise the situation’s intricate gravity. It’s to acknowledge that progress ultimately happens or doesn’t happen because someone does or doesn’t do some thing(s) on account of others agreeing or not agreeing to it(them). Preferences and choices.

Words matter. How are you on your cliff edges and regulatory harmonisations? Can you find your way from a single market to a customs union without stepping on a double backstop? Would you even want to? Can we speak normally?

Tell me the options and don’t use words I need a glossary or dictionary to translate into it’s-late-and-I’m-tired. It’s late and I’m tired; speak human.

“Begin at the beginning and go on until you come to the end: then stop”

Mapping out available options on the decisions we face is a place to start. It’s not easy to see which choices are definitively mutually exclusive to others — indeed on trade, many have argued that our bargaining power will rise despite our buying power falling.

Sovereignty lets you go to market on your own, but it doesn’t mean you can have your pick of the buyers and sellers — Tweet this

Unless they’ve all been waiting to strike better deals with a new, smaller partner at the expense of their relationships with their existing, bigger partners. Who knows.

Anyway — back to choices. They don’t present themselves and they’re not obvious, so I’ve made some uncontroversial assumptions in creating the decision tree below. Like:

Changing laws takes time

People aren’t bluffing

Ultimately, this is about economic prosperity and not just legal autonomy; ie. ends and means

There are many motivations for Brexit — demographic, regulatory, economic. The point above about trade isn’t mine, it’s from the flag-bearers of Leave…

Farage in 2013 and Johnson in 2018

“Either it brings tears to their eyes, or else -”

Some or all of this could be wrong. But for my money, this is the simplest summary of why we’re here and why we’re stuck. In plain English.

Do not pass go and do not collect £200

“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

If you can find a way out of the game, let me know in the comments. I’m stacking my chips on an election, an extension to the timeline (possibly via some more Article 50 fun and games) and ultimately a second referendum — with a new political paradigm emerging somewhere along the way.

In the meantime, it doesn’t look like the UK government has any new offers, and the existing one is only going one way…

Theresa May’s best offer is heading for the shredder

“We’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.”

Meanwhile — and totally reasonably — the UK government is:

Advising businesses to leave the country

Scheduling emergency deliveries for vital drug supplies

Recruiting “Local Preparedness” roles for “local or national emergencies”

These are not normal times. Some say “we don’t know what will happen”. Well, no employer has said “we will come to the UK because of Brexit” while several have said “we will pause investment in the UK because of Brexit”. It’s a short path from lost jobs to lost homes. No logistics provider has said “we will deliver more time-critical goods on time because of Brexit”. It’s a short path from lost drugs to lost lives. There may be extraordinary benefits of Brexit, in the long term. There will be extraordinary uncertainty in the here and now. Not uncertainty like “who will be the next Doctor Who” uncertainty. Uncertainty like “who will be my next Doctor” uncertainty.