4 ms·

I think she has handled this dreadfully. She should have built a parliamentary cross-party consensus on what option to pursue well before now. Her only negotiat

• tomp 8y ago
  > saying my deal or no deal But consider it from a higher-level perspective. Had she done everything perfectly (for whatever definition of "perfect"), would anything be different? The EU is the "problem" here, not the UK parliament. The UK was never going to get what they wanted - free trade with no freedom of movement, nor no border between Ireland and Northern Ireland and no border between Norther Ireland and the main island. The only deal possible is something like Norway and Switzerland have. And the reality is, that neither Tory nor Labour MPs want to remain (because of how the political system works in the UK), either fully (in the EU), or partially (outside of the EU and subject to EU rules). So they (predictably) vote against that (only possible) deal. Edit: This was, of course, perfectly obvious to all politicians, which is why no one wanted to deal with it.
  • xioxox 8y ago
    The deal is the only one possible with her red lines. She should have reached agreement on the red lines before starting the negotiation. She shouldn't have called Article 50 before getting an agreement across the parties. ~50% of the country voted to stay in and ~50% to stay out, so compromise is required. One solution would have been to have a followup referendum to ask the public what kind of Brexit they wanted - setting out the real options with their advantages and disadvantages.
  • lucozade 8y ago
    > The only deal possible is something like Norway and Switzerland have And yet, that's not what she was negotiating. You're correct in the sense that there was never a perfect Brexit to be had but we're about a week away from the worst possible outcome. Those were never the only two options. And a lot of the problems are of her own making. The execution of the 2017 GE was one of the worst in living memory. That was entirely her doing. She then fought against parliamentary scrutiny and lost. She then threw away most of her negotiating position. At that point, any sensible person would realise that they're not going to get everything their own way and start preparing for getting consensus. But no, they negotiated a deal without any discussion outside of the Government (even key members of her own party) and are then surprised when it doesn't pass. I take that back. The deal didn't just not pass. It was the worst ever Government loss in the history of one of the oldest parliaments in the world. So time to reset, take stock and change tack? No, let's keep barrelling on. Why? No idea. I mean, the fixed date, red lines etc are there to keep the harder Brexiters on side i.e. the folk that aren't even voting for the deal. The whole strategy only made rationale sense if she had a landslide in 2017. When that didn't occur, the only sensible approach was to spend 2 years achieving a cross party consensus for something. And just to be clear, I'm not only a natural Tory, I was delighted when she was chosen as PM as she appeared to be the sort of pragmatic technocrat that I believed the country needed at this time. Unfortunately, I now believe she is the worst PM we have had in my lifetime. And about to cause preventable harm to the country I call home. It is most saddening.
  • threeseed 8y ago
    - May chose to leave. - May chose the date to leave. - May chose the redlines. - May chose how the Irish backstop would work. - May chose not to work with Corbyn on leaving. - May chose to capitulate to the ERG. And yet somehow this is the EU's fault ?