To give some perspective on the concept of requiring a deal:
A friend in Seattle bought a house just before the crash in 2008. She made two payments. Unfortunately for the bank, the mortgage got messed up in all that subprime bundling (promissory note separated from the deed, or something like that) and she and they started negotiating regarding he continuing payments.
They are still negotiating. She still lives in the house. She has yet to make another payment. This could be indefinite. She has zero incentive to agree to a deal.
And Brussels has no incentive to come to any kind of deal. They can simply drag this on for decades.
The sole government member present made this exact point. They are tying his hands in advance of any negotiations. Labour lady countered that she trusts that the EU representatives will negotiate in good faith because they are such peachy-keen fellers, and if they don’t, then they can repeal the act that they just passed. This is worse than dangerously naive. It’s malice.
Most astonishing thing was that some of the Scottish nationalists started clamoring to impeach Johnson, accusing him of not wanting to negotiate with the EU so that the UK could fall into the evil clutches of—GASP! ORGAN CHORD!—Donald Trump. It’s like a parallel universe to the US government, and Trump is England’s Putin (still a racist, of course). I turned it off when it got to Northern Ireland and new legislation to do whatever they do in Northern Ireland. But first I got to hear a former Labour member thoroughly curse out Jeremy Corbin. It was sweet.