Brexit mirrors

It's impossible for anyone, however well immersed in Brexit terminology, to be absolutely certain whether the Theresa May Stage 1 deal announced with such trumpeting means what it says because there appear, on first reading, to be so many potential loopholes and double meanings and ambiguous wording that you need a mirror, microscope and telescope to emerge any the wiser. No wonder David Davis, the UK Brexit Secretary, admitted he hadn't read the 800-odd pages of Brexit briefings to help him in the negotiations. There's a lot of legal gobbledygook on almost every page. I have spoken to great experts on Brexit, fellow reporters who have written about almost nothing else for the last year, and they give very earnest explanations about this and that but I am no les confused as a result. Perhaps this is what all negotiated documents are like, whatever the subject matter, but the opening Brexit deal has surely got to be a fudge of momentous, historic proportions. How can there be no border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland after Brexit if the UK is to leave the EU single market? If there's no border, then Northern Ireland will effectively be part of the EU single market but as Northern Ireland is very much a part of the UK, it can't be IN the EU single market AND out of the single market. No idea how that will work. Arlene Foster, the pug-faced leader of Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) decided to change her mind when Theresa May rang her up in the early hours and promised there would never be a "hard border" between North and South or East and West, and that the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, formally ending the Protestant/Catholic war, would remain sacrosanct. I'm pretty sure that was always the case, except that Theresa this time probably had an unexpected coughing fit when she mentioned the phrase "regulatory divergence" which, in the first draft of the text, caused Ms Foster to explode in apoplexy. The new phrase is regulatory alignment, but even that is a tricky bit of language open to different intepretations. So in the phone chat in the early hours I assume Mrs May said to Ms Foster: "And of course, Arlene, can I call you Arlene, you do understand don't you that under the COUGH COUGH COUGH, sorry about that, there is no question about there being any sort of COUGH COUGH COUGH and that all I want is a strong and stable government which includes Northern Ireland without there being any COUGH COUGH COUGH across the Irish Sea? Have I made myself clear?" Ms Foster probably replied: "Oh for f...sake, Prime Minister, get yourself some Strepsils for that dreadful cough and yes ok whatever...but don't think I won't bring you down at the slightest mention of regulatory divergence in the future." But Theresa has had her moment of triumph bless her, and she deserves it after being up all night and then catching an early Easyjet to Brussels to stand next to the odious Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission who put his arm around her shoulder for the celebratory photograph. Yuck!! It didn't take long for Michael Gove, the Fish and Farming Secretary, to tell everyone that the whole deal could be scrapped just like that at the next election if the public didn't like it. Or did he mean "didn't understand a word of it"? And David Davis, Brexit Exit Haven't a Clue Secretary, also helpfully poined out that if the EU failed to give us a decent trade deal, the UK would refuse to pay them all that lovely exit lolly, currently valued at £39 BILLION. Hey ho, it could still all go wrong. I hope David Cameron, mastermind of all this chaos, is pleased with himself, wherever he is in his comfortable home as the first snowflakes fall.