-12: Deal or No-Deal?

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Boris Johnson got a deal with the EU, which is a great achievement for him, as it was far from clear the EU would be interested in revealing how resolutely opposed to the no-deal Brexit it is (unlike Johnson was seems fully prepared for all the options). Now the question is whether the UK parliament will back it up. It is being decided as I write.

Things go too fast for analysis, and it is difficult to predict one way or the other but the two alternatives seem more clear. I feel the deal will be rejected. In which case, Benn's law will enact a request for an extension to January 2020, which however is likely to be rejected by the EU, as the delay is too short for any further progress and this is just uselessly postponing by always shorter amounts of time. So a no-deal Brexit is then likely. If the deal is accepted, then Brexit will be enacted, in conditions which seem rather beneficial to the EU who made some temporary compromises, on which it will recover the upper hand later. It is therefore my feeling that Johnson himself secretly hopes (or knows) that the deal will be rejected. It seems to me he put himself in this master position of pretending to want something that he knows everybody else will reject. Possibly he instructed trusted members of his own side to this effect (the balance of power is delicately distributed, a few votes will make a big difference). But then Johnson will be the latest one can blame for the negative outcome: he brought a deal, and this was rejected, first by Parliament, and the extension will be rejected by the EU. So both EU and UK parliament will be held accountable. And Johnson will get the no-deal Brexit he certainly wishes for, without having to involve Farage. Master move. If the Parliament votes against today, and the EU grants this delay... then the UK will be at a considerable advantage as there is no concession that the EU will not be ready to make to avoid the no-deal scenario, which is valuable information to know about your opponent: what they're refusing to do at all cost. Johnson has shown he's open to all options... including the deal-Brexit. However bad is this deal for UK (it is bad)... but that's for others to save the country on this occasion. Johnson saved his own political agenda for now and is certainly in a good position to become a major political player of British history (at least at the level of Thatcher and possibly beyond that) in a post no-deal Brexit UK. The only reason I see why the deal would be accepted when nobody seems to really want it, is that of extreme boredom and tiredness of this never-ending process... although somehow, it feels like we're just at the beginning of a really fierce argument, not at its conclusion through giving up. Ironically, the EU will probably get tired of Brexit before UK does, and would probably prefer to fight a non-EU UK than one which is like a shard in their flank. I guess their plan B now is to make UK so miserable that it will have to come back to the negotiation table, but on the EU's terms, no on theirs... which is currently the case, if the situation keeps being dictated by the mood of the UK parliament.