'Won't somebody please think of the children' i.e. admit that they exist.

I can’t believe no-one has done this particular brexit analogy at some point in the last few years, but it just occurred to me. People, especially people advocating ‘no-deal’, seem quite fond of talking about brexit like it is a divorce. Don’t pay the divorce bill, all that nonsense. It is obvious from the way they regard these negotiations that the idea of a divorce here is one where there are just two adults splitting up, and the only issues are ‘who gets which bits of our property’ and ‘who gets how much money from who’. The negotiations are then just a zero-sum game of ‘playing hardball’, threatening to walk away etc etc so you can try and get a slightly larger share of the spoils than the other party.

It’s certainly likely that your average tory leadership candidate has more direct, thorough and/or recent experience of the various types of divorce than i do; but to me it seems as though brexit is more akin to a divorce where the main issue is ‘what the fuck are we going to do to look after our kids’. There’s just one house, that someone is going to have to move out of, and so the money that used to just about be enough to sustain a certain lifestyle for one household probably won’t stretch to doing the same for two. Think of the kids in this scenario as representing things like ‘our future shared prosperity through trade’ and ‘our ongoing ability to co-operate on the many international issues that affect us all’.

It should, I think, be obvious that in this sort of divorce, there is no such thing as ‘no-deal’. There is only the scenario where we manage to set out a framework for looking after the kids by mutual agreement, or the scenario where we have to go through a more antagonistic process to arrive at a fundamentally similar but externally imposed and policed agreement. Having wasted a lot of (already scarce) money, destroyed any mutual trust, and arrived at a probably worse solution in the process. There has to be a deal. The only question is whether it should be a ‘turn up ten minutes late to pick up the kids and you are in breach of the settlement’ kind of deal, or a more mutually agreeable ‘let’s agree to work together as best we can for the sake of the kids’ sort of deal.

As long as our government (and those who aspire to head it) continue to treat this like a celebrity quickie divorce - carving up the property, paying the bill and then just moving on to that blonde you’ve had your eye on for years - then the idea of ‘no-deal’ will continue to sound appealing. Can’t we just be done with all of this and move on? But this divorce isn’t like that, mainly because of the kids.We’re leaving the house, but we’re clearly going to have to stay in the neighbourhood. And we’re ending a particular kind of relationship, but that doesn’t mean ending all relationship. It’s commonplace in this context to hear someone implore ‘won’t somebody think of the kids?’. That would be a start, but a step further would be for people to start approaching this situation, talking about it, and talking to each other and us, like adults.