Brexit negotiations

Natasha Whittam wrote:It will get through Parliament because most of the British public, whether they wanted to leave or not, just want the whole thing sorted so we can move on.

I've started building that stature of our great leader, I'm hoping to get permission to display it on top of Whittam Towers.

The British public voted to leave.

They aren't voting again.

This comes down to the parliamentary arithmetic now.

If she fails at the first attempt, then the EU might toss her a few more crumbs for another vote.

Even May knows we would be better off remaining in the EU than accepting this deal. She just can't admit it.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-46312909

xmiles wrote:Even May knows we would be better off remaining in the EU than accepting this deal. She just can't admit it.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-46312909

I actual listened to her answer at the time and thought how poorly she answered it.

I would have thought that would have been an obvious question to have been prepared from if she was throwing herself to the public - and in all honesty an easy one to answer.

If it had been me faced with that question I would have said something like -

Well of course I'm on record of voting Remain, so I obviously thought at the time staying in the EU was the right thing to do but at the end of the day the country voted for Brexit and it is my duty to carry out those wishes to the very best of my ability and achieve the best deal for the country that I possibly can - and which I truly believe I have.

Clearly the future of the country outside the EU will be different from that if we had stayed but which of the two would be the best you ask?

Well the honest answer is that non of us know - I guess it is a bit like the film Sliding Doors - there are two different endings but we can only go down one path - and we have chosen ours.  We will learn in time what happens to us as we travel along the Brexit route - but we will never know the outcome if we had stayed in the EU because of course we haven't.

At least now we will have control over our boarders and our laws will once again become sovereign and no longer answerable to Brussels - and that is what the people voted for.

So yes if that is important to the majority of people then clearly Brexit will be better for us and isn't that a wonderful start as a basis to build a better Great Britton for us all, which is something we could never have been able to do if we had have stayed in the EU?

Or something like that!

Nice try sluffy but you go completely off the rails in your penultimate paragraph.

Just over a third of the electorate voted for brexit, hardly "the majority of people". And it is ridiculous to say that brexit is "a basis to build a better Great Britton for us all, which is something we could never have been able to do if we had have stayed in the EU". You contradict this yourself a couple of paragraphs earlier when you say "We will learn in time what happens to us as we travel along the Brexit route - but we will never know the outcome if we had stayed in the EU because of course we haven't".

May could not say we will be better off with this deal because she knows that it is inferior to what we had as a member of the EU. It is what the vast majority of experts have always said. The contrary view is held by serial liars like Boris and Trump and people like Farage, Rees-Mogg, Putin and a few greedy right wing billionaires.

To be honest mate I'm not at all bothered, that was just my sort of top of the head reply at 1 o'clock this morning after returning from a night out!

I'm sure a reply could have been constructed a thousand times better than my attempted by her professional (and no doubt highly paid) advisors.

At the end of the day we are where we are.

People can cry as much as they want as to whether the referendum was fair or whether it was a true representation of the people or whatever else they think about because that boat as sailed and there's clearly no going back on it.

If people want to halt Brexit they have to do something that is a 'live' issue - get their MP's to vote against the Government proposals and perhaps seek a new referendum or general election or something like that.

To be honest though most people I know are simply sick to death hearing about 'Brexit' all the time now and would rather it is just done and put to bed now as it is clear to them that nobody as the balls to stand up and wants to stop it. The Conservatives Brexiteers Mogg, Davies, Johnson, Gove, Leadsom, etc, etc can't even get above 5% of the Conservative MP's to put in a letter of No Confidence in who they probably believe is the worst PM we've ever had.  Labour Party under the nutjobs of the left fronted by Corbyn are more bothered about winning an election AFTER Brexit, rather than trying to prevent it and DUP, Scottish Conservative group, Lib Dem's and other minor groupings are just a joke quite frankly.

Until the public show there is no will for this to happen with mass marches on the street throughout the country - maybe even rioting such as there was against the proposed Poll Tax at the time  - then the politicians won't change their stance on things - but there is certainly not that amount of anger/passion about the issue from the vast majority of the people on the street for that to happen.

I'm sure that there are still many twist and turns to be played out before we are scheduled to leave the EU and maybe there is some way to make a better deal or even not leave at all - but looking back to what did or did not happen fairly at the Referendum has long since passed and won't have any bearing on what is to happen in the future.

Sluffy wrote:To be honest mate I'm not at all bothered, that was just my sort of top of the head reply at 1 o'clock this morning after returning from a night out!

Did you pull?

Natasha Whittam wrote:

Sluffy wrote:To be honest mate I'm not at all bothered, that was just my sort of top of the head reply at 1 o'clock this morning after returning from a night out!

Did you pull?

At my age I'm lucky to pull a muscle let alone anything else.

With apologies to Simon and Garfunkel: All lies and spin, still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.

All done and dusted. What a woman. Despite opposition from some in her own party she has pushed it through and kept her job.

Inspirational.

Natasha Whittam wrote:All done and dusted. What a woman. Despite opposition from some in her own party she has pushed it through and kept her job.

Inspirational.

In all seriousness I've heard people praising her 'remarkable resilience' - essentially for not resigning despite getting battered for 2 years.

Embarrassingly low standards.

You might be right, but she's done what she set out to do despite many saying she wouldn't keep her job.

She set out to get us a good deal, she's ended up capitulating to the EU and giving in to near enough every one of their demands. 

I don't blame her for that, it was obvious we'd never get a good deal out of them to everyone except leavers - especially if we want to end freedom of movement.

But let's not pretend she's negotiated with any skill or expertise, or that she's led the country well. It's been a shambles for two years, and now she's got to get it through parliament.

I agree it's a shambles, but she's done her best with little support.

She's responsible for the state of these negotiations over the last two years, she triggered Article 50 without laying any groundwork, she called a general election and she set her red lines - which pandered to the right of her party and made a rod for her own back in negotiations.

If this is 'her best' it's a long way short of the standards we need.

T.R.O.Y wrote:She's responsible for the state of these negotiations over the last two years, she triggered Article 50 without laying any groundwork, she called a general election and she set her red lines - which pandered to the right of her party and made a rod for her own back in negotiations.

If this is 'her best' it's a long way short of the standards we need.

When did any politician (in recent times) meet the required standard?

So your solution to that is to lower your standards and congratulate her for doing a great job at not resigning?

I'd prefer them to be held to account.

T.R.O.Y wrote:She's responsible for the state of these negotiations over the last two years, she triggered Article 50 without laying any groundwork, she called a general election and she set her red lines - which pandered to the right of her party and made a rod for her own back in negotiations.

If this is 'her best' it's a long way short of the standards we need.

Pandering to the right wing europhobes in the Tory party is her biggest mistake. There was no public demand or even interest in a referendum in the first place. We only had one because Cameron foolishly thought he would win it and that would shut up the right wing element. It wouldn't have worked even if he had won.

If May had not immediately committed herself to a hard brexit she would have had more room for manoeuvre. However for purely party political reasons and in a futile attempt to buy the support of the right wing loons in her party she set her red lines. This is neither good leadership nor the basis for effective negotiation.

Bob on XM, she made a rod for her own back by going for popularity with her party over what was good for the country. Laughable that anyone can look at her performance and say anything positive.

T.R.O.Y wrote:So your solution to that is to lower your standards and congratulate her for doing a great job at not resigning?

I'd prefer them to be held to account.

It's easy to say you'd hold them to account when you sit in the Labour camp.

She's done a good job in difficult circumstances, that's all I'm saying.