To think we couldn't really be in a worse position to start Brexit negotiations tomorrow

[Bearbehind]

My reason for voting Remakn was always that there was no credible case for Leaving imo.

One year on and on the eve of negotiations, we are in a worse position than ever before

• we don't have a majority government
• we don't have even the beginnings of a consensus of the type of Brexit we should aim for
• people are realising that 'a few years pain for long term gain' is going to hurt too much

Are there any positives here?

The thing is Dog, cash in hand seasonal work has always made up the majority of employment in rural areas. Farmers were paying students cash to take in the harvest decades ago. The world has changed though and if the only people who can be found to pick the soft fruit and seasonal veg area from the EU then that's what we'll have to work with.

My biggest complaint about the Leve campaign is it was playing silly nuggets with the livelihood of many people in the rural community and the food chain we all rely on. But it'll all be ok because they tell us it will.

Ironically, farmers mainly voted leave and are now regretting that decision.

Of course it has always made up the majority of such work, it's just there were labour shortages pre EE accession in 2004 too. I think fundamentally we agree actually, it's just I don't think British people are necessarily doing something deserving of criticism when they don't want to do either temporary agricultural work or increasingly zero hour service jobs.

I'm not criticising the people as such. More the culture of this country that has let people be back into corners and left holes that need to be filled by temporary solutions.

It makes me angry that we've all been encouraged to blame a group of people who are vulnerable to physical and verbal abuse, rather than the government as a whole.

not too bad today and I like the idea of dividing it into 3 working groups - one working on individuals' rights to stay, a second on what the UK pays as the exit free and a third on the legal issues. That seems quite a sensible way to divide the tasks.

Meanwhile the NHS is at the point of collapse and the UK economy is about to go down the plug hole.

What a complete waste of valuable resources and time.
Utter lunacy.

Who is in charge? Laura Kuennsberg, BBC political editor

"It's often compared to a divorce - the UK wanted to talk about who gets the house and the CD collection at the same time as settling who pays for the kids' weddings in 20 years' time.
The EU on the other hand have been firm all along that the future arrangements could only be discussed once the terms of the initial split have been agreed.

The debate was called "parallelism versus sequentialism" and from this afternoon's press conference and the announcement of the procedure it is clear that the UK has lost.
Ministers believed they would be able to persuade the EU - the failure to do so has been described as a "total cave-in".

The discussion was even predicted by Mr Davis as likely to be the "row of the summer". The row won't happen because it seems the UK has already given in."