As it turns out, despite being plastered all over the media last Friday, May's "done" deal on Brexit was in fact a "fake" deal. Its actual substance proved to be so vague that it is at best confusing, and at worst, deliberately ambiguous.
In fact, it is not even a "deal", but a joint report on what has been agreed so far "in principle". And most of it is about the government reasserting its aim to retain the free circulation of goods (how, it does not say clearly, though!), so as not to upset the bosses, while stopping the free movement of people. Never mind that, today, for the first time in history, technology could allow all of us to travel to the other end of the planet in less than a day! Once again, it's all about the Tories harking back to their little England's imperial past, wanting to have their cake and eat it - nothing new here!
Beyond that, the truth is that this fake deal was yet another attempt by May to restore some order among her party's warring factions. But, by the same token, after months of sterile negotiations in which her Cabinet's Brexit bigots made a complete mess by failing to deliver on any of their lunatic promises, it was also an attempt to put a positive gloss on her horse-trading with the EU, which is increasingly getting on people's nerves.
May's convoluted scheming backfires
Although she would never have admitted it, May knew that she did not have a chance in hell of delivering on her own pledge to get the trade negotiations started, after this week's long-planned summit. So, as a face-saving exercise, she chose to make up this fake "deal" and to present it as a major breakthrough, in order to be able to blame the fully-expected further delay on the EU's "hostility".
But May's convoluted manoeuvre has finally backfired. Once again, she underestimated the stupidity of her Cabinet's Brexiteers.
No sooner had she announced this fake "deal" than her chief Brexit bigot, David Davis, rushed to throw a banana skin under her feet - by insisting that it was just a "statement of intent", which was conditional on a future trade deal. Never mind that one of the very few things on which this "deal", is crystal clear, is that it is NOT conditional on the outcome of the future rounds! But it does outline what the outcome of the first round of talks is expected to be.
Predictably, however, Davis' overbidding caused outrage among the EU negotiators. They promptly stated, ahead of this Thursday's summit, that there would be no trade talks before March 2018. And, quite logically, they added that May's government would have to sort out its internal quarrels and turn the vague hot air of its so-called "deal" into firm commitments beforehand.
And meanwhile, in the real world...
Fake news has been a feature of the Brexit saga ever since the referendum was first announced by Cameron. Meanwhile, in the real world in which we all live, there is real news, which exposes the intolerable injustice of a society owned and run by capitalists motivated purely by their greed for profit.
So 6 months after the Grenfell tower disaster, 80% of the people who were made homeless by the fire are still waiting for a permanent home. And this is in Britain's richest borough, where thousands of homes are owned by the wealthy and kept empty as profitable investment, while their prices increase! And although these owners will now be (minimally) penalised by having to pay higher council tax, councils have not been given the powers to requisition these homes for the growing army of the homeless! Worse even, the government's last budget awarded tens of billions of pounds to construction and real estate giants, as a subsidy to build flats which are unaffordable for working people - but awarded only peanuts for social housing!
At the same time, the latest inflation figures published this week show a rise in CPI to 3.1% - a 6-year high - while the RPI index, which takes housing costs into account, stuck at the same 3.9% level as last month. Significantly, food, fuel and transport - which even the poorest have to buy - are among the biggest contributors to inflation. And, while politicians carry on with their Brexit monopoly game, no-one dares to deny any more that this inflation is due to the Brexit saga and the fall in the pound that it caused.
Meanwhile, most employers are insisting on keeping their pay offers - when they make an offer at all - well below inflation. So, on top of the crisis which has been significantly cutting our real wages over the past decade, we are now supposed to pay for the Brexit chaos, even before it happens!
So, yes, there is something deeply rotten in the kingdom of capitalism and the politicians' Brexit is an integral part of this rot. If we do not want to foot the bill for this stinking mess, there's only one way forward - by showing that we've had enough of it!