Wednesday 13 March 2019

The morning after the night before

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Theresa May understood nothing about Brexit. She imagined it was about stopping immigration from Europe and about industry, when it is more about freedom and the service sector.  

She was not clever enough and certainly not self-confident enough to succeed in the Brexit negotiations. Disraeli at the Congress of Berlin she was not.

We know she needs to lean on people. She leant heavily on Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill. She may now lean on civil servant Olly Robbins, who should have been promptly fired for blurting out the government's negotiation tactics in a bar in a hotel in Brussels.


Her other political ideas are misguided or malign: trade unionists and more women on boards for example; more anti-discrimination laws. However, losing her party's majority in the election she called has thankfully swept those ideas away.

Is Brexit finished, as Rod Liddle says today?

If Theresa May's plan somehow goes through, which I think it still probably will, at some point, it may be worse than staying in. So he might be right.

Much better we leave with no deal, which Robert Peston thinks the EU will force us to leave without a deal from exasperation. One anonymous "level-headed, pragmatic minister" quoted by the BBC expects that this will happen, but I do not believe it for a moment. 

What the EU hopes for is a deal so bad for England that we return to the club in ten years without the rebate won by Margaret Thatcher and accepting the euro. I think Mrs May's proposals would facilitate that outcome. Apart from anything else after leaving with no deal national pride would prevent it. Mrs May's proposal would keep us an EU vassal and for a vassal full membership might well be preferable.

I think if we cannot leave with no deal or a Norwegian or Swiss type deal it might be best to remain in for a time though this would be a terrible humiliation for us and would lead to the destruction of the Tory party. 

Whatever happens, Brexit looks set to dominate politics for the next decade. Maybe much longer. If we stay in it is hard to imagine that we would not leave one day but after making very big problems for the EU. 

But by then the anti-immigration right might have taken over the EU.

5 comments:

  1. I think if we cannot leave with no deal or a Norwegian or Swiss type deal it might be best to remain in for a time

    If Britain stays then the chances of any future referendum ending in a leave vote would be pretty much non-existent. If Britain stays in it will be forever.

    though this would be a terrible humiliation for us and would lead to the destruction of the Tory party.

    The destruction of the Tory Party would be an incredibly positive thing.

    But by then the anti-immigration right might have taken over the EU.

    Sadly there's not the slightest sign that that is likely to happen.

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  2. Theresa May understood nothing about Brexit.

    Or perhaps she understood very clearly that she was made Tory leader for one purpose and one purpose only, to ensure that Brexit would not happen.

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  3. A Romanian commented: I agree with most of what you say except for the last paragraph from the first article. If the UK stays in I think this would be a great defeat for right-wing nationalists. No country would initiate another EU referendum if the UK doesn't leave after voting for Brexit.

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