“Does no-one else find paragraph more than a bit worrying...”
No I don’t, haggis. We need to get on. Enough time has been wasted because of interventions by time servers and self-interested parties. The process needs to move on. Enough powers and responsibilities were transferred from Westminster to Brussels over the last 40 years with scarcely an eyebrow raised in Westminster. It won’t hurt for a few reversals to occur in the same manner.
There is still something troubling me which nobody (not only our sagacious AB-ers, but nobody in politics or the media either) has explained when questions like this arise.
Labour (today, the SNP yesterday, Tory rebels tomorrow and the Lords the day after) it is said, plans to sabotage Brexit by voting against the “deal” or “settlement” or whatever else it is called. Fine. That is their prerogative. But what happens if they do? Article 50 is quite clear. Once the clause has been triggered there is a two year notice period (which begins the day after tomorrow). At the end of that period unless the European Council (not the MEPs, note) unanimously agrees to an extension (which would be most unlikely if the UK is in an apparent state of disarray) the departing nation is out. No longer a member. Finito. Gone. An erstwhile member nation.
So would the groups making these threats prefer to see the UK leave with no deal at all? Because it is not within their power to ensure anything else happens and their threats are actually quite meaningless. There are only two alternatives: on 29th March 2019 we leave and that leaving will be either accompanied by an agreement or it will not. The threatening groups seem to believe that there is somehow a third alternative. But there isn’t.