The Brexit headache is just beginning

Pretty much everyone I meet says they want all the Brexit uncertainty to end, one way or another. But that is now impossible: even agreement – which seems remote – on some version of the PM’s deal to take us out of the EU would only be a beginning of a sort, not an end, with so much left to decide on what kind of future relationship we need and deserve with the EU.

And if there is no backing from MPs for the Withdrawal Agreement that is the divorce from the EU, then we are into a series of choices whose consequences would be to lead to various forms of national and international fission.

Every option, from a no-deal Brexit to a referendum, or even revocation of the decision to leave, leads to some combination of UK nations (England versus Northern Ireland and Scotland) or social groups (to simplify, nationalist low-income Brexiters versus internationalist wealthier Remainers) shouting treachery and betrayal.