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A new 'fair and balanced' Brexit Deal has been agreed between the EU and the UK, on the brink of a decisive EU summit.

The deal can be found here.

The changes versus the old deal under Theresa May have to do with the Northern Ireland border problem.

Having a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic would violate the Good Friday agreements, and hence needed to be avoided. However, Unionists in control of the Northern Ireland government insisted that NI remained a full part of the UK, with everything that goes along with that.

Squaring that circle has been worked out as follows.

Northern Ireland remains a part of the UK Customs zone, hence no customs duties need to be payed when bringing goods into NI from the rest of the UK. For exports to third-party countries, NI will follow the UK tariff rules. However, if a good might ultimately be destined for the EU, EU tariffs will apply.

To ensure these rules are followed, UK Customs will set up border checks in NI, but not at the border with the Irish Republic. Instead, customs checks will be carried out at the point of entry from the rest of the UK into Northern Ireland, i.e. its border crossings for the Irish Sea. These customs checks may be inspected by the EU; in any case, monthly communications are held about them.

UK Customs will collect EU tariffs, then send them to Brussels.

A similar arrangement has been agreed for VAT payments.

One of the difficulties might be in deciding what goods are likely to be exported to the EU i.e. any goods that might be subject to commercial processing in Northern Ireland, where 'processing' is defined as any alteration of goods, any transformation of goods in any way, or any subjecting of goods to operations other than for the purpose of preserving them in good condition or for adding or affixing marks, labels, seals or any other documentation to ensure compliance with any specific requirements.

That's a fairly broad criterium, and might hit NI businesses who mainly import and export from/to the UK. This might be resolved through reimbursement by UK Customs (i.e. point 6(a).).

A Joint Committee will refine those criteria during a transition period of 14 months (i.e. until the end of 2020). That Joint Committee will also decide on the volume of fish, exempted from duties, brought into Northern Ireland harbours.(How tariffs are going to applied to them fish is entirely unknown, but one can hear the artificial intelligence crowd already sharpening their marketing brochures).

For a number of articles in the agreement, the ECJ (European Court of Justice) will have ultimate jurisdiction. The UK may participate in those cases as a Member State, but will have to apply such decisions in the same way as other member states.

Another critical point, but mainly on the EU side, will be that 2 months before the end of a 4 year period (the 'initial period') after the transition period (14 months from Oct 31), the UK government will give the opportunity to the people of Northern Ireland, to express their democratic consent with the continued application of Articles 5 to 10 (the whole tariff and border checks thing). If they don't agree, there might again be a hard border in Ireland after an additional 4+2 year period.

In a reaction, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said that this was a bad deal, actually worse than May's, and a people's vote through a new referendum should be the decision maker. The Unionists of the DUP also rejected the deal, but the suspicion there is that that's likely to be negotiable, with the right amount of money.

On the hot and humid afternoon of August 28, United Kingdom's Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, dispatched Jacob Rees-Mogg, Lord President of the Privy Council, to Balmoral Castle.

His mission: to interrupt the Queen's holiday, and request the prorogation -- that means suspension to you, Unwashed Plebs -- of Parliament.

The Queen approved, thereby avoiding a crisis in Britain's constitutional monarchy system.

Britain, you see, has no real written Constitution. Instead it has a series of political gentleman agreements and historical details. Not abiding by these will hit you with the cruel punishment of being called impolite. In extreme circumstances, the word fekking! may be added.

In short, the Queen's refusal would have led to a situation in which nobody really seemed to know what to do -- no precedence and all that, especially during Afternoon Tea.

Which is an apt description for the hot potato in British politics: Brexit.

While the PM insists that this is only to prepare an ambitious investment program, critical minds [theregister.co.uk] think otherwise: Parliament now has only three weeks left to prevent Britain leaving the EU on WTO terms only. Hard to do when legislation must pass back-and-forth between the House of Commons and the House of Lords.

Voters, as interviewed on the BBC [bbc.com], seem not to be too concerned, going as far as to claim that it is actually Parliament which is undemocratic, for trying to block the result of the 2016 referendum.

Suspending Parliament to end all those unnecessary tit-for-tat and back-and-forth discussions: maybe the nephews at the other side of the pond can learn a thing or two from the Boris?