Brexit: No Deal is a Done Deal...

The stars are aligning, the rumours are starting and in what were smoke-filled back rooms (until EU intervention) plans are afoot regarding Brexit.

All the signs now point to there being no deal in place by the end of the Article 50 negotiation period.

I take this hard Brexit approach (and thereby a complete refusal to truly negotiate -on both sides) as a ply to force the UK back towards EU membership.

Effectively the plan seems to be the "No-Deal" scenario will be so horrendous there will be a clamour from voters to end the Article 50 process and go back to the loving busom of the EU.

I'm one of the "Hard" Brexiters: exit from the EU is worth ANY cost to the UK. Regaining control of laws, borders trade and everything else the EU sticks it's money-grubbing fingers into is worth the cost. ANY cost.

I know Dan Hannan would like a more reasoned approach, but where money is involved, the EU loses all reason. If we leave, we remove a huge chunk from the EU budget, leaving Germany as the main contributor. I can imagine the New German government will be putting immense pressure on the EU to get a deal where we still contribute money for access to EU markets. Hence the EU's insistance on sorting out the money first and then sorting out trade deals. How exactly we're supposed to negotiate a bill before we know what services we're paying for.I don't know.

To expand on Mr Juncker's Bar analogy, nobody pays the tab up front before they know what they drinks they are are paying for. £5 a glass for a coke is a bit different than £5 for a JD & coke. You pay your share of the tab up to the point you leave the bar. And no-one pays for drinks that are served after they leave the bar.

It's like Mr Juncker going up to a bar and the barman saying "That'll be 100 Euros..." The very next words out of Mr Junckers words would be "What for, I haven't ordered yet!?"

Not what I put my tick in the box on referendum day for.

Sure, if we get a deal that is worth the money, then fair enough, but paying (for instance) the biggest contribution just to be a member of the club but not on the committee should not be an option.

Out means out, as we were told several times by the remain side during the referendum campaign.

Human Interfaces

The Brexit thing between May and juncker takes me back to my I.T. days. Back when I worked in Interactive Voice Systems, I did a lot of research into human-machine interaction. I could write reams on how or why unsuccessful IVR systems are unsuccessful.

But the Brexit issues boil down to the same problems. Lack of undertstanding or empathy.

When writing the software for IVR systems, you need to understand the needs of the other party, the customer dialling into the system.

You also need to communicate your needs clearly, so they understand what is required of them to make the negotiation between them and the machine work properly.

You need to also undertsand the nuances of language both whilst communicating your needs and also during their interaction with you. It's so frustrating to talk to someone and for them to not acknowledge with some sort of response. We instantly become unsure as to whether our message has been heard.

In an IVR system, the simple addition of a "Thank you" prompt after each input signals that the machine has heard something. If that input doesn't match the system's requirements then should prompt there has been an error and ask for input again. In essence, the negotiation between the two becomes as natural as normal conversation, because the machine is programmed to respond with an approximation of human interaction.

The Brexit debacle between the UK and the EU is similar. Two poeple talking at each other without an particular empathy towards to other's position.

Theresa may is a leader, she doesn't need to enter into details, she will talk of the big picture, making big descisions and it's for junior ministers in government to action those ideas and take care of the details.

Junker despite his position, is no leader. He appropriates the concensus of others and aproximates leadership, but he doesn't have the ability to make big unilateral decisions. He's a beareaucrat, he loves the detail.

So, the two of them are talking at odds because they are talking about different aspects of the same issue, not because they disagree. Either they have failed to understand each other's different perspective, or the language and interpretation was a bit dodgy, or they just want to set out each other's position. They are talking at each other and not talking to each other. It is not a conversation, it is rhetoric, and for the medai to protray it as anything else is wrong. May is not in a different galaxy, nor is Juncker bombastic.

Either way, the media have now jumped on the bandwagon and portrayed it as a massive rift between the two sides, when actually there isn''t one.

It's going to be like this for the most part through the Brexit negotiations. Until two underlings of equal status and at the same level sit on each side of the negotiating table and start to work on the minutiae of the deals, only then will we get any sense of what actually the Brexit deal entails.

So, ignore anything coming out of the media for the next 18 months. They will play up the minutest difference in position, make mountains out of minute molehills, just to make headlines.

It ain't over until it's over.