Laurel and Hardy
Another fine mess is the best you can say about the speech by Lord Frost and the tweets by Dominic Cummings.
First Lord Frost demands that the EU renegotiates the NIP that he negotiated, praised, helped pass into law and campaigned for in a general election. Then Mr Cummings tweets that the plan all along was to sign the deal and then tear it up. As they say the key to comedy is timing.
Also Dominic claims, the PM didn’t understand the deal and worst of all, breaking international law is something only wishy washy lawyers and wet liberal students worry about.
Presumably real men break it all the time on the way to the pub, just after winning a game of rugby and before seducing their best mate’s wife.
Just to be clear, international law matters for many reasons but mainly because if supposedly sensible, democratically accountable and responsible states break it, every nasty, aggressive, tinpot regime will too.
But the most shocking thing is the confidence of Lord Frost and Dominic Cummings. This almost messianic belief that they can break the rules, that others must and will bend to their will, that laws are for the little people, that they have broken the mould and as a result they have outwitted everybody else and will emerge victorious.
Unfortunately, unlike Laurel and Hardy whose pomposity was punctured with little more than a soda syphon and a cream pie, we have to put up with these strutting peacocks and suffer the consequences.
You cannot demand that someone renegotiates a deal in your favour after you have signed it, especially after telling them that you suckered them last time.
Economics, trade and Brexit, not necessarily in that order but the dog always comes first.