Why does it all have to be so complicated?

"It's OK, we can just walk away with no deal, and trade on WTO terms," they keep telling me.  "Why should Brexit be complicated?"

Well, apart from the fact that the process we're about to enter with the sending of a little Article 50 letter isn't a trade negotiation...

If we walk away with no deal that's no deal on the future rights of British ex-pats in EU countries and other EU ex-pats in the UK.  It means nobody knows the status of the border between Northern Ireland and the South, and poor Nigel Farage doesn't know where his EU pension will come from.  And a few thousand other things.

We already trade on WTO terms with most of the world. We use the EU's terms.  To reactivate the UK's membership of the World Trade Organisation we have to propose a schedule of tariffs and other ways we want to deal with the world.  And any other member of the WTO can object to our proposals.

One of those other members is the EU, part of whose schedule we would probably try to take on, to save time.  Because what we don't have is time.

At the moment we leave the EU we have to know the terms on which we deal with the EU, and "no deal" doesn't sound a good way to start.  We also lose our access to the dozens of trade agreements the EU has made while we've been a member.  Many-to-most of those might be available for quick re-signing, but at least one country has already argued that a lone UK shouldn't just get the same terms as we had while part of a 500million-strong market.

Remember all those other countries queuing up to sign shiny new trade deals with us the moment we leave?  If they have any sense at all, nothing will be finalised until they know our relationship with the EU and so what we're worth to them.  Shall we say "no deal" might well be of less value in some cases?

To say nothing of the things that Article 50 actually does cover - how far do we get without a proper legal relationship with international regulatory systems for air travel, chemicals manufacture, medicines testing and dozens of other sectors?

A lot of these things might well be easy enough to reconstruct - REconstruct, at a cost - but not if we walk out without a deal.

No deal is better than a bad deal. Is a bad deal what Theresa May wants?

What is Theresa May planning for Brexit (if anything)?  She tells us she will present a deal for Parliament to approve in less than two years.  Most people who follow the news might therefore be thinking that everything will be sorted out by early 2019.  But the Article 50 process is not a trade negotiation, and nobody on the other side of the table expects to be talking about separation and trade at the same time.

The much-quoted clause 2 of the article says (my emphasis):

... the Union shall negotiate and conclude an agreement with [the withdrawing] State, setting out the arrangements for its withdrawal, taking account of the framework for its future relationship with the Union.

Nothing is impossible, but insiders seem to agree that arrangements for withdrawal, coupled with an agreement on a framework for the future, can be completed within two years, but any actual trade deals will take longer, which could mean the UK is unable to do deals with non-EU countries for some time.

On the quiet, the government acknowledges this. When the CBI asks not to be left looking over the cliff edge of a sudden change in relationships, May and Brexit minister David Davis will acknowledge that time might be needed to complete the implementation of the deal.  The word "transition" sometimes passes their lips but always as if it's implementation of a deal already signed.

"No deal is better than a bad deal," May has said.  But there's no time limit on trade negotiations.  The Article 50 deadline applies only to agreement on things like money, ex-pats, membership of security, scientific and other organisations.  "Crashing out on WTO terms" is nothing to do with that, unless we make such a mess of it that we leave the EU and have to negotiate a free trade agreement from outside, but May is telling us it is.

My worry is that the government is feeding the expectation that everything will be done and dusted by 2019.  The more vociferous Brexiters don't see why it should take even that long, but if we stay "unfree" past that date there will be more than grumbles.

We're going to see a brief battle in Parliament this week over the possibility of a "meaningful" vote on whatever deals emerge, but Gina Miller is right. - we won't know for a year or more what options we will have and should fight for. We won't know for about the same time whether an Article 50 notification can be withdrawn or reversed.  Today we're in a phony war, which May wants to keep phony as long as possible.

I don't know what Parliament might have to vote on in 2018-19.  I do know that May will have to manage expectations very differently to avoid massive disappointment, backbench revolts and perhaps worse.  Farage has warned of "public anger" at any "betrayal".  Less calculating voices suggest taking to the streets.  A prime minister who seems terrified of telling us anything definite about the future might give them an excuse to deliver.