I wish I shared your faith in our electorate. 

It's not even just that, they think it's worth it (and presumably that it won't affect them personally so much) somehow. To "get it over with" as though No Deal wouldn't be just the beginning of a colossal fucking mess for the next several decades. 

Tories helping a lot by being impressively incompetent but labour played a blinder yesterday and today. I have a tiny sliver of optimism.

I dare say that if you were a fund manager with a business in, I dunno, Ireland, there's a great deal of money to be made by short-selling shares in UK industries that rely on the EU.

Seems like lots happened/happening - where can I find a good (but concise) summary of everything?

Depends how granular you want it. Guardian politics live is pretty good moment to moment.

This is pretty amusing

https://twitter.com/IanDunt

Ideally I'd like Neo Kung Fu format...

I don't suppose there's an option I'm missing to view that Guardian info all on one page and in proper chronological order?

It's neater on the mobile app, where the Live button brings up all posts in chronological order and as you scroll down you can select a number of sub-categories including UK Politics Live. With the www site you have to wait until the Live categories pop up on the front page or section pages. The Live posts are again chronological, but in pages so you have to click on at the bottom of each one. It would be easy to rationalise in the same fashion as the app, but they haven't.

Looks like it's in the bag, but WWBD?

> The Live posts are again chronological, but in pages so you have to click on at the bottom of each one

No, they're backwards. It's not chronological is you don't start at the beginning. :@

Anyway, I made a script to grab all the pages and reverse the order - browse to the first live page, open the console, paste the following script, hit return, and when it's done it'll scroll to the first entry. If I could be arsed I'd probably make it a GreaseMonkey script or something.

(function fixGuardianLive()
{
	var BlockSelector = '.blocks';
	var NavSelector = '.liveblog-navigation__link[data-link-name="older page"]';

	var Blocks = document.querySelector(BlockSelector);
	var FixedBlocks = [];

	appendBlocks(Blocks.children);
	http_get( document.querySelector(NavSelector).attributes.href.value , addNextPage );


	function complete()
	{
		Blocks.innerHTML = FixedBlocks.reverse().join() ;
		Blocks.children[0].scrollIntoView();
	}
	
	function appendBlocks(Items)
	{
		for ( var c = 0 ; c < Items.length ; ++c )
			FixedBlocks.push( Items[c].outerHTML );
	}

	function addNextPage()
	{
		if ( this.status !== 200 )
		{
			console.error('Failed to append next page')
			console.log(this);
			return;
		}

		var Content = document.createElement('div');
		Content.innerHTML = this.responseText;

		appendBlocks( Content.querySelector(BlockSelector).children );

		var NextPageUrl = Content.querySelector(NavSelector).attributes.href;

		if ( typeof NextPageUrl !== 'undefined' )
		{
			http_get( NextPageUrl.value , this.onload );
		}
		else
		{
			complete();
		}
	};

	function http_get(url,onload)
	{
		var request = new XMLHttpRequest();
		request.open('GET',url,true);
		request.onload = onload;
		request.onerror = function(){console.error('Connection error');console.log(this);};
		request.send();
	}
})()

Trade deal's been struck.

Could have had a better deal a year ago. Could have had a better deal under Johnson's government but 1) he's permanently stuck in campaign mode rather than governing 2) he can't work out which faction in his party he's most scared of.

Yep, better than no deal, but still a shit deal.

A bit like cutting your foot off is better than cutting your head off...

And that total butt-hole Starmer intends to whip the opposition to support it. He seems to have an almost infallible ability to make 180 degree wrong decisions with no pressure on him. The govt. has an 80 seat majority. Labour abstaining would still see the deal go through. Now Johnson can (rightly) state that the deal has support from both sides of the house. 

I suppose I shouldn't expect more when a supposed human-rights lawyer whips the opposition to abstain rather than oppose measures to make soldiers who murder and torture abroad immune from prosecution at home.

I think in this particular case he’s damned if he does or doesn’t. Abstaining would be taken badly by the UK press. Which doesn’t change my general agreement for what you’re saying, and it’s his as much his own fault as well as his mates for all refusing to countenance the chance we had for a Brexit with single market and free movement (and plenty more besides) under Corbyn. Hope they enjoy reaping the whirlwind sooner rather than later. 

I agree, but sadly, his appearance is his primary consideration, i.e. his Westminster view of how t'northern voters in t'lost constituencies should view him as 'strong' on law and 'supportive' of a brexit/trade deal. In other words, Johnson is driving the agenda and Starmer is in campaign mode as well. Any idea of being honest and principled has vanished. Pity being named after a Labour icon doesn't impart any similarities.

I agree, but abstaining would be the right middle ground IMO. It'd show that Labour isn't rejecting the deal, however they are putting full onus on the Tories to own it. By voting in favour, every time Starmer criticises anything about it going forwards, Boris will just reply with "Well, you backed the deal"...

Why Boris blinked: