Cartoonist Martin Shovel clarifies the British position on Brexit.

The United Kingdom does not have an elected government at this time; we have a caretaker administration that will seek Parliament’s consent to run the country in a vote after the Queen’s Speech on Wednesday.

Theresa May does not have the authority to send David Davis to negotiate the UK’s departure from the European Union with Michel Barnier today.

But that is what she has done.

Mr Davies has no mandate to speak on behalf of the UK. It is not known whether Parliament agrees with the position he will put forward.

I mean, what is that position? The EU’s Guy Verhofstadt recently complained that he has had no information about it at all:

Mr Verhofstadt’s concerns are echoed by people here in the UK:

Many, like Alastair Campbell (below), have pointed out that the Conservatives have been unable to reach an agreement with the Democratic Unionist Party for its 10 MPs to support a minority Conservative government. The DUP has been delaying discussions, to put the Tories in an ever-more-difficult position and push them into making a bigger offer to the extremist right-wingers from Northern Ireland than they might have done otherwise. Mr Campbell makes a good point:

Nobody believes David Davis and his crew will be able to negotiate any kind of acceptable deal:

https://twitter.com/Nick_Pettigrew/status/876479053968093186

Polls have shown that public opinion is swinging away from support for Brexit. Is there a way out?

Mr Verhofstadt has said he would welcome the idea – although it would not be a return to the EU that we have known before:

So – thanks to the Conservative Party’s selfish EU referendum (called to placate Tory backbenchers, and nothing to do with the good of the UK as a whole) – we are unsafe whatever we do.

We should all remember that, not only as reports of these talks progress, but also when Theresa May tries to put her hopelessly sparse two-year programme of government before Parliament on Wednesday and asks for permission to form a government.

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