Thread by @Usherwood

Hot take: nothing has changed

1/

Both Spelman and Brady are, in essence, negatively constructed: things that Parliament doesn't like

2/

Spelman says that a no-deal should be avoided, but doesn't say how (and the failure of Cooper suggests that Parliament is not mad keen to take powers to itself to force the issue by Art.50 extension)

3/

Brady says the backstop is the problem, but doesn't spell out what 'alternative arrangements' might be (and could May during debate earlier), mainly because there's no obvious way to do it

4/

So it's all more of the same: let's not do things we really don't like, neglecting that this only leaves things we don't like quite a lot

5/

As @anandMenon1 observed the other day in my earshot, everyone's getting their excuses in early about why this is a mess.

The issue is that there's so much of this that it's making it a very much bigger mess, by closing down options

6/

And so we move on to the next phase of probable pointlessness, The Trip to Brussels, where it will turn out that the EU wasn't just saying the things it's been saying for months now

7/

The main Qs for now are "what's left in the fig-leaf shop?" and "will it be enough to cover enough people's embarrassments?"

TBH I'm not sure on either count

8/

And we'll leave it at that: another day closer to 29 March and another day with no appreciable progress

/end

@AndrewSparrow @UKandEU