It is impossible to avoid discussion of Theresa May's humiliation in Salzburg this morning. Every paper seems to be carrying the story. The lame and unworkable Chequers plan for Brexit has been resoundingly rejected. The recriminations and excuses have begun.
Most such accusations appear to focus on the question as to how May's advisers could have let her reach this point. Others suggest the EU is being utterly unreasonable in not bending to her wishes. Both suggestions are wrong from the outset.
The first assumes May does what her advisers do. But we know that she does not do that. She ran the Home Office on the basis of her own team, not the official one, and tried to do the same at Downing Street until that team had to be sacked for planning the last, disastrous, election for her. There is no reason to think she listens to her current advisers. If May can't think for herself she is not fit to be in office. I think she made this mess despite, rather than because of, her advisers.
And that's true with regard to her attitude to Europe as well. She is not a team player. And certainly not clubbable. The rules of engagement that come from the experience of participation probably pass her by. Many of the disasters from her time at the Home Office indicate that. And I strongly suspect that she does not recognise the need (I stress, need) for the EU to close ranks and stick to rules when under existential challenge, as it is from Brexit. Of course they were not going to move far from known behaviour patterns, which was why it was always essential to have followed one of them. But we aren't.
To put it another way, May has no one to blame but herself.
Her premiership has always been about kicking a can down a blind alley. She's nearly reached its end now.
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I agree with everything you say but the Leave group will make sure that the rejection is seen as the nations shame and not May’s. It will be portrayed as an act against the whole country – not a poor leader.
And many will fall for it.
@PSR You are exactly right and her stilted robotic delivery is deemed ‘dignified’ in certain quarters believe it or not. Personally I will turn off the sound and picture when she appears on TV and radio (and the same goes her ERG fellows as well) – makes my blood boil!
I still say that this was the original plan and when we exit in some disastrous fashion it will be blamed on the EU side and all that follows will be their fault as well. I can also guarantee that you will not get any critical analysis after the event from the vast majority of the main stream media either.
The quality of politicians in both the UK and EU are just not the sharpest pencils in the box. Most voters in this country know about the Tory government austerity cuts but few are aware it took an awful long time after the onslaught of the GFC for the ECB to be persuaded to do QE and start buying Eurozone member country bonds to ease the fiscal collar.
How can Theresa May be so stupid and yet have risen so far? I’m convinced it is a conundrum that future historians will be able to write many papers on 🙂
Anyone with half a brain could see that the starting point for leaving a club is having none of the benefits of that club. We are then in the position of having to ask the EU for what they are willing to give us (we have some additional leverage as a large European economy but not as much as some people seem to think).
The various versions of “how dare the EU do this and that/not cave into our demands” are essentially just the EU sticking to the rules of their club.
As you say, our negotiation has to be based around one of the existing models that the EU have for dealing with non-EU members, possibly plus a little bit of extra flexibility. Why would the EU want to invent another model entirely? It is not at all in their interest.
We are now facing ‘no deal’ as the most likely outcome; noticeably promoted with typically casual insoucience by the ERG Conservatives. They cannot believe their luck, for Theresa May is probably the only PM who could have delivered such a wretched impasse, producing a prospect which the ERG could not otherwise have hoped for: ‘no deal’ and WTO rules.
The reason for this state of affairs has nothing to do with negotiations with the EU. Indeed the EU’s input is irrelevant, and could be discounted from the outset. The ideological ERG Brexit Conservatives, the only politicians in the UK who are wholly indifferent to the direct consequences of Brexit for the public, are eager to achieve ‘no deal’ (this is a matter of essential, evidence free, self-righteous dogma for them): not least because it allows the ERG Brexiteers, before the event, gratuitously to blame the EU for the failure conspired by a lame, deeply flawed Conservative Government’s abject approach to negotiations, and for luridly whipped-up anxieties contrived or exploited by the ERG and their supporters.
Far more critical than such considerations, the Conservative ideologues do not want a deal, or even for the Government ever to present an agreed, plausible and viable proposal to the EU (because it would necessarily entail the Customs Union, and Single Market, and may prove successful, which would work, not least for Ireland; but never do work for pure ‘British’ ideologists, indifferent to evidence or reality): that is why the Brexit can is still being kicked down the road.
Far more important for the dogmatic Brexiteers, they do not believe that if they actually presented in clear and precise terms what they want and expect from Brexit, and the implications of their ambitions were properly understood by the electorate: Brexit, the Conservative Party and the politicians responsible for all this would all summarily be rejected out of hand by the electorate, and – far more important to the Brexiteer ideologues – the Conservative Party would be unlikely to survive the consequences. The ERG Brexiteers never, ever produce anything but propaganda.
This outcome has been obvious since Article 50 was invoked.
Was it a humiliation or was it a pivotal tactical victory? If we work on the basis that May is now working for BoJo, Nige, Aaron and their mates in the 0.1% who crave crashing out with no deal and the ensuing regulatory bonfire that will enable them to bleed dry the other 99.9% of the UK population, she has done a fantastic job. Not only has she dressed it up as being all the EU’s fault but by doing so she has emboldened the alt-right lobby and driven yet more deluded victims to their cause.
Well put your money where your mouths are people! Stand as an MP. Or just remain the poor quality biased armchair commentators that the majority on here are.
Whatever I might be, few think I am an armchair commentator
Thank you for the generous sentiments, your delicately refined insight, the rare impartiality you uphold, and the natural warmth of your opinion. You tellingly remind us that, for you at least, “money” is the measure of all things; without your robust reminder, who would have guessed the part it plays?
You can’t level that accusation at Richard – who spends his life chucking armchairs and the rest of the furniture around the room! We need a lot more Richards, campaigning and educating – it’s not just about MPs, especially if you think our current political system is dysfunctional. And who knows what practical activities other contributors here might be busy with…
Otherwise I’d have to agree with the general sentiment. I think of the UK, and May and bits of England in particular, as being like that difficult teenager who has been endlessly complaining that it’s ‘not fair’. They’ve now said that they are going to storm out of the family home with little thought as to where they are going to live or how they are going to support themselves. Meanwhile the rest of the family have got to the point of saying ‘whatever’ as they’ve got more important problems to deal with.
When you see it from the perspective of the other 27 countries (yes – it’s 27 to 1, not 1 vs 1), a view that we rarely hear, they must be pretty fed up at the costs, grief and time wasting that the UK has chosen to impose on them.
Rousing words! Which constituency are you standing in then? Or are you just another armchair commentator?
May has found herself in a near impossible possible re negotiation. That said the eurozone is fundamentally flawed and the euro had caused so much hardship – why should it survive?
http://citywire.co.uk/wealth-manager/news/liam-halligan-the-eurozone-is-about-to-implode/a1157397?re=58206&ea=251829&utm_source=BulkEmail_WM_Daily_PM&utm_medium=BulkEmail_WM_Daily_PM&utm_campaign=BulkEmail_WM_Daily_PM
She’s just going through the motions basically.
“……And certainly not clubbable.”
Well that’s a matter of opinion…..depends what size and weight of club you have to hand. 🙂
John S Warren says:
“We are now facing ‘no deal’ as the most likely outcome; ….”
I really don’t see how ‘No Deal’ is an option. There has to be a’deal’ of some sort. Are we not going to have any future relations with the whole of the EU ? There has to be some sort of format… how is that not a deal ?
I think ‘No Deal’ is a fantasy. It’s grown from a soundbite which was neat: ‘No deal is better than a bad deal.’ In general that’s a good negotiating position, but in this case it’s not possible to have no terms of engagement with the largest trading block on Earth(?) which is also our closest and most important trading partners.
It makes no sense to me….
Ah, you mean a fudge. ‘No deal’ that looks like a deal because there is a document and signatures; appearance wholly detached from reality? That kind of deal. Well, of course. For example, a technical customs system in Ireland without borders; producing electronic files of trade movements, but nothing on the border; which will carry on informally as if nothing has changed, but nobody mentions it so it doesn’t exist and Britain can pretend its hapless, decrepit, dysfunctional constitution actually works: that kind of agreement? Sounds a very British solution to me; meanwhile we will exploit the opportunity presented by undermining the European Union, and introduce WHO regulations elsewhere in the UK to the detriment of the population at large. Oh, yes we can do that.
I call that ‘no deal’. Think of the ‘crash’, and the “deal” there: bail-out the banks, bring nobody to justice, establish austerity, and carry on with the banking system as if nothing has changed. I call that ‘no deal’.
But May is a remainer. Why do any of us believe that she would want to negotiate a Brexit deal which is in the best interests of the people of the UK when she doesn’t even believe that such a deal can exist?
Theresa will keep us in the EU and she’ll make us all believe that she did her best but, in the end, it’s what the people of Britain really wanted.
I think of Ruth Davidson running the negotiations for Scottish independence if Yes had won in 2014 and ask myself “how could the majority of Tories believe that Theresa May was going to lead them to the Brexit Promised Land?” May running the Brexit negotiations for the UK is such a bizarre idea that I’m astonished the hard-liners aren’t currently screaming their scepticism.
Haven’t seen this covered elsewhere just yet but does the ball end up in labour’s court just before the whistle blows?
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/09/british-pm-theresa-planning-snap-election-november-180923052959623.html
If this is true do we get a second referendum?
What are the odds of labour having the strength to agree to anything that benefits the entire society?
High it seems right now
Hmmm… interesting exchange….
Zachariah says:
“What are the odds of labour having the strength to agree to anything that benefits the entire society?”
Richard Murphy replies: “High it seems right now”
But what does Labour think is going to be the right course of action to benefit the entire country? Is it rational to assume that Labour can be collectively said to think anything, ? They seem to be as divided as the Tories on the Brexit issue ?
Maybe something will emerge from conference.
Albeit aggregated before the LP conference, the current state of play is that the Tories are (incredibly) 2 points ahead – https://pollofpolls.eu/GB. So although either May or Corbyn could be instrumental in triggering a snap GE , the latter must surely be seriously concerned as to what the outcome would be both for him personally, his party and the country at large. The much vaunted 540,00 or so members of the LP are largely irrelevant in the context of our FPTP voting system.
The original architects (Cameron, Farage, et al.) of this entire wretched business launched the country into a zero-sum game from which it will take decades to recover. And, as with the bankers, they will face no personal inconvenience.
My view is that we need to seize on the No Deal scenario because (A) it completely ignores the concerns of the Remain vote (and is therefore very undemocratic) and (B) are the Tories seriously saying that all the Leave voters actually voted for higher prices, and a loss of connectivity to Europe (and their holiday destinations) as well as possible shortages of basic food and other supplies? Did they vote for job losses in the auto economy? Did the vote to see the development grants stopped?
Some hot heads probably did but not every Leave voter.
This is why a No Deal (ND) scenario is totally unacceptable. And a ND signifies failure by May and her WREXIT brats. If I was HM Opposition, this is the story I would be concentrating on 24/7.
If we are to leave, there has to be a deal of some sort. That is the minimum I would apply.
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It’s symptomatic of the curious ‘game’ that Theresa May is playing with ‘her’ precious country that we have in this thread the suggestion that she’s playing a blinder by pretending to do her best, but secretly her intention is to precipitate a hard Brexit .
And the entirely opposite suggestion that as a confirmed ‘Remainer’ she’s deliberately trying to foul up the entire negotiating process quite deliberately to have the Brexit process reversed.
The very uncomfortable truth is perhaps she doesn’t care what the outcome will be. It certainly looks that way some of the time. She’s playing the role of nanny and referee to a bunch of overgrown schoolboys, but seems to have quite forgotten where the naughty step is.
I can only conclude that Private Fraser is on the money….”We’re dooooomed.”