*The deglobalized condition of the UK. It’s so different than anybody ever expected.
*For a state to be in “vassal status,” you have to assume that a global feudalism exists. That’s not what’s going on. Britain isn’t even a “failed state,” which is what a state gets called when it can’t respond diplomatically, and can’t integrate itself into the Westphalian condition.
Britain's condition is a new, “dropout state” status: just, “chuck it, to hell with you and your alien orders; no, I won’t fill out the forms; I don’t care about the diploma; retirement plans and health insurance, so what; I’m gonna make my life up as I go along. Maybe plant a back garden or something. I’ll be fine.” It's rather Robert Louis Stevenson "Idler," only with some hypocrisy added because those involved still have to pretend to govern.
*Commentators are amazed and startled that the Tory elite would do this, and they’re very scold-y about it, but for that scolding to make any sense, you have to assume that the violated framework is gonna persist. That is by no means a given. If everybody just downs tools and leaves the work-site, the whole thing vanishes, it’s like the mysterious disappearance of the Mayan Empire.
* “But what about our stone calendars and our blood-letting rituals?! It’s all been worked out in amazing detail!” Yes, it has. TOO amazing in detail, actually. So amazing that our jungle tribe can’t keep up. They can PRETEND to keep up, they can offer lies and fantasies that sound like Mayan governance, but they can't really do it. Probably they can't even be proper "vassals," because vassals have to have the basic capacity to follow royal orders. These Tory apparatchiks aren't gonna do that; they're just gonna retreat farther and farther into extremist bluster and fake news, while the European calendar pages fall in a moldy heap.
(...)
There is everything, and nothing, to say about Brexit.
The same hard facts are still there, and looming.
The UK will leave the EU by automatic operation of international law on 29 March 2019, unless something not now in view happens.
The UK government does not know what it wants, and there is no UK Brexit policy worth the name.
The EU27 do know what they want and, again unless something not now in view happens, that will be what the UK gets – both in terms of transition arrangements and future relationship.
There is less and less time for there to be any further referendum before 29 March 2019. Nor is there any real time left for a “Remain” reversal of the Brexit process.
Any “transition” arrangements will be for the the full acquis of EU law, and all the paraphernalia of EU obligations, but without any formal presence in any institution – this is, as somebody has said, vassal status...."
