Are we tired of Brexit yet?

If you wish to understand this government you might begin with Robert Conquest’s third law of politics. Namely, that ‘The simplest way to explain the behaviour of any bureaucratic organisation is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies’. This is certainly a more plausible hypothesis than any obviously available alternative. Indeed, there are times when you begin to think this government’s mission must be to persuade us that, contrary to the evidence hitherto presented, a government led by Jeremy Corbyn might be no bad thing. Or, at any rate, no worse than the government we have now. 

Take Liam Fox and Boris Johnson, for instance, notionally two of Brexit’s ‘Big Four’ though increasingly, like Arsenal, relegated to sixth place. Let us, for a change, begin with Dr Fox. Today he warns that the Confederation of British Industry, that its preference for something as close to the status quo as possible risks leaving the UK ‘with one arm tied behind our back’ when it comes to negotiating future trade deals.