Colburn_Claret wrote:As someone who voted leave , I said from day 1 that no deal was better than a bad deal.
She said that herself once upon a time, but didn't argue that case in Brussels. The thing is the EU doesn't want to deal with us at any price, but a no deal is as bad for the individual nations as it is for us. She should have played on that, and made it clear she was prepared to walk away. That would have had remainers having a massive hissy fit, just as her deal has leavers having a hissy fit. She's tried to sit on the fence, when taking that stance has just given the hand to Brussels.
It's too late to backtrack. There's no point going back, again , to Brussels, when she loses the vote tonight. It's time to accept no deal and move on.
The downside, and it's not the fault of Brexit, is the country should have been preparing for that scenario for the last 2 years, even if it hoped it wouldn't be necessary. We are sadly under prepared, and that's all down to May as well.
You think May conducted her negotiations with 'no deal' off the table? It's been hanging over the negotiations from day one. And rather than being a 'threat' to get the other countries to bargain seriously, I'd say it's been a huge hindrance. Her negotiating position, with her red lines etc started off so far from the EU position that she had no choice but to make compromises in order to find this agreement. There were three things the EU wanted to finalise before anything else: The status of EU and British citizens living in each other's countries. The border with Ireland. And the final bill. I'm sorry, but May could have resolved these much earlier - a mutual respecting of each other's citizens rights, staying in the customs union to maintain the integrity of the Good Friday Agreement, and the money issue was pretty much already decided. The whole thing of leaving the customs union could be pushed back to a future date, but we'd still be leaving the EU. And she failed to do this. You can't blame remainers for any of this, because she largely took the advice of the ERG. The Labour position on brexit was published a year and a half ago, and passed at the last conference, and Corbyn has said several times that he'd work with her as long as she worked within Labour's framework. She's had the opportunity to do a better job, and she's failed.
I'm afraid you're going to be disappointed after tonight, because the destruction of her deal isn't going to come with us leaving the EU without a deal. The small handful of extreme leavers will just have to accept that and move on. Of all the leave voters I know, none are in favour of crashing out. Nobody I know considers the potential disruption of essential supplies a 'price worth paying' nor the grounding of flights, or disruption to police cooperation, and any of the other pointlessly crap things that could (will - because making a deal in any of these areas will not be 'no deal') come as a result.
