Today is the day we find out whether the United Kingdom is fucked or not.

Saturday, October 19, 2019, a date that will live on in infamy.  The BBC have sold this to the nation good and proper.  They have essentially told us that, well, Parliament is likely to reject the deal that Prime Minister BloJo got off the EU this week, because it’s essentially the same as Theresa May’s deal, but with a different line down the Irish Sea.

But, almost in the very next sentence, they have said, but you never know, Parliament might just vote in favour of it…

All I know is, from a personal perspective, I leave for Los Angeles on Monday morning, a citizen of the EU, and return two weeks later a citizen of the UK.  I think they have told me that I can still use my old passport to return, but I’m going to have to get a new one if I want to leave the UK again at any time in the future.

The deal is, just as May’s deal was, a sell-out, a compromise, a shafting to all those who voted either way (OK, maybe not those who didn’t vote; how can you be shafted if you don’t offer yourself for a shafting?).  Three years of arguing, fighting, in-fighting, former friends falling out, friends and lovers calling it a day based on a difference of opinion over whether we should be ruled by one town or another one.

And Boris Johnson’s deal, especially if you hail from the great province of Northern Ireland, or indeed their Irish cousins in the Republic, who are most definitely staying in the EU, has most definitely shafted you because you may feel that your vote in the 2016 Referendum counts for nothing.  Or, for those in the Republic, you may feel that your dear cousins up there in Northern Ireland voted for you to be tied to a non-EU state, i.e. the UK, despite your wishing to remain in the EU and have nothing to do with countries that actively want to leave it.  Despite there being no ‘hard border’ between North and South, goods and people are still going to have to be checked either way because otherwise – and the Tories are going to hate this – people could come in and out of the UK illegally through these non-checked borders as a way of getting in or out of the EU.  Other unchecked items such as, I don’t know, drugs and so forth could also very easily make their way in and out of the EU.  Guns, knives bought off the dark web for eleven-year-olds to take into school with them.  Great big, eighteen-inch meat cleavers that might be ever-so handy to have about your person should you be gripped by that uncontrollable urge to knife your geography teacher through the neck and pull out his lungs one by one.   All of that may now be possible once these tariffs and border checks are not in place between north and south.

Now, you might say, that’s already possible, but since most of those deadly guns and other assorted weaponry comes from the USA, then actually it’s going to be easier to get them into the UK.  Anyhoo, that’s a separate argument for another day.

This is one area in which I agree with Labour leader Jeremy “don’t call me Jezza-bel” Corbyn.  Mr Corbyn has systematically disproved every single thing I thought and wrote about him after his election to the post in 2015.  I thought he was the great hope for Labour after the Tories defeated them in the election that year, paving the way for the referendum the following year.

Unfortunately, Mr Corbyn was nothing of the kind.  His biro-in-my-pocket shtick quickly became tiresome, and it also turned out that he and other members of his party held some rather deeply disturbing pro-Palestinian views in which Jews were not given much airtime, let’s put it that way.

But when Mr Corbyn said yesterday that this deal is worse than Theresa May’s, I had to agree.  Yes, Jezza-bel, I said to the TV almost before I realised I had said it. But, I then retorted to the image of Mr Corbyn who made no attempt at making eye contact with the camera – and, de facto, me.

OK.  I can’t remember what I’ve explained in previous blogs, so forgive me if I repeat myself, but here’s what’s going to happen today (Saturday):  Parliament is meeting on a Saturday for the first time since the Falklands War back in 1982.  That’s 37 years in old money.   And they’re doing it to vote on BloJo’s deal with the EU as explained above.  If the vote is carried, then legal ins and outs are carried out, Boris rubs his hands with glee, and we leave the EU on October 31, God help us.  If the deal is not carried, then by law Johnson must go to the EU and ask for an extension – which, he has said on many occasions he will not do and the top brass over in Brussels have said they wouldn’t grant it even if he did.

This puts the Prime Minister in a bit of a pickle.  He refuses to ask for an extension, but he must by law if this deal doesn’t work.  The EU already gave the UK one extension (remember the UK was originally scheduled to leave on March 29, 2019).  So I don’t blame them for not giving us another one.

All of this mess stems from the Referendum result in June 2016.  The final result was so close that nobody was really sure how to frame it in negotiation; was it ‘the will of the people’? Or a small majority?  In the end, they decided to go with ‘the will of the people, despite being only 1.9% of two thirds of the electorate.  Yeah, that’s democratic.  Leave voters say, respect democracy, but that is because the result was so close they are worried about defeat.  What if that 1.9% majority turns into 0.01% in favour of remain?  That’s why they don’t want another referendum!

Another referendum is called and a two thirds majority of the entire House of Commons is demanded.  That means all of those who thought going down the pub was more fun, change your minds, nip down the polling station and then go off to the pub.  As long as you don’t go to the pub to sing racist songs and football chants while England football team try to satisfy all you armchair pundits who think Harry Maguire isn’t worth £85 million. x