August 31st: The End of the Silly Season. The UK, against all the odds, voted to leave the EU. In the USA Donald Trump survived despite chronic foot-in-mouth disease. In Rio the Russian Olympic team appeared phoenix-like to take part despite a ban as punishment for institutionalised drug taking. In France a truck became a terror weapon and modest Muslim women were hassled on beaches as a result. In Germany 28,000 workers were laid off by VW because a dispute with a Bosnian seat cover supplier escalated and the supplier stopped delivering. And celebrity magazines around the world announced that the Duchess of Cambridge is pregnant.
September 1st: The Beginning of the Silly Season. In the UK hundreds of thousands of members and supporters will vote to re-elect Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the UK Labour Party creating conflict at the Labour Party Conference later this month between these members and most Labour MPs, who don’t support him or his policies. The Corbynites will claim that the purpose of this standoff is to test the reliability of their newly appointed security firm OCS. In the USA Donald Trump will spin the outcome of a private meeting with the President of Mexico by suggesting that the Mexicans are looking forward to the wall being built and have decided to borrow the money to pay for it from the Bank of America because US interest rates are so low. However, negotiations with BoA will break down when they realise that the repayments for the loan will largely be financed by Mexicans working in the US who will in turn have to borrow the money from US banks because they exist on subsistence wages.
Newspapers in Rio will express their amazement at the way the UK treats its Paralympians when it is revealed that basketball star Freya Levy (age 19) has been living in a sheltered housing apartment block because of the disgraceful lack of suitable accommodation in the Essex favelas of suburban London. Celebrity magazines around the world will continue to claim that the Duchess of Cambridge is pregnant.
And to avert a PR disaster Apple Inc will decide to make a reasonable offer of unpaid back taxes to the Irish government, who will reject the offer and demand a much smaller amount, in order not to frighten off other would be tax-avoiding corporations.
Looks like we are in for a bumper season of negotiations. Bring them on.
Stephen White