Inside the addict’s head the most important thing is getting to the next Brexit fix, scoring the best deal. But from the outside, to our European friends and family [lovely image] , it is obvious that the problem is the compulsive pursuit of a product that does us only harm...
After all their hopes, the wrecking/leaving amendments failed, and Behr has to rationalize that too:
Some MPs can see the situation spiralling out of control. Today 298 lined up to demand an intervention. They backed a cross-party bid to seize control of the Brexit agenda from the government and delay the day of departure if necessary. But the move failed [so is a majority important or not?] . There is ample horror of the no-deal scenario across the Commons (a vaguer condemnation of that option won a narrow majority), but clearly the greater fear is association with anything that looks like an active plot to thwart Brexit [cowardice rather than representing their constituents] . Yvette Cooper and Nick Boles, sponsors of the more controversial amendment, insisted their aim was only to guarantee an orderly departure, and there is no reason to doubt them [Jesus!]
Behr is eager to trot out the line we heard endlessly on TV last night --that the only purpose of the Irish backstop provision is to prevent a hard border which will threaten peace: 'The backstop only exists because May’s Brexit red lines could not be bent around the Good Friday agreement any other way.' Nothing to do with trade terms or punishing Britain! Nothing has been said to remove the threat of a hard border once the EC realized they would have to be the ones to install it.
What Remainers and the EU do is high-minded and civilized politics aimed at world peace. For others, however:
It is the bluff that Britain holds all the cards, and that if we show enough contempt for treaties and economic logic, Brussels will be intimidated into granting favours that could not be won by conventional diplomacy. There are two possible reasons for pursuing that strategy. One is stupidity: failure to grasp what the negotiations so far have actually been about and how May’s deal was their logical outcome. The second is cynical vandalism: knowing that the plan will fail and hoping, when it does, to pin blame for a chaotic no-deal Brexit on Brussels intransigence.
And/or it is all cynical party politics, but only on one side, of course:
May still acts as if Brexit is something that must be settled to the satisfaction of the Conservative party first, and only then shared with the rest of Europe. The British public is at the very back of the queue [how a Remainer can write that last sentence is beyond belief]
Only the EU ever had a realistic view:
They expected May to start building bridges from the leavers’ fantasy island to the reality of what was available in negotiations with a bloc of 27 countries – the imbalance of power and the calculus of damage limitation....But May never confronted that logic. When she took the referendum result as her personal mission she also anointed herself with sacred oils of Brexiteer mythology. Her inscrutable demeanour and robotic speeches conceal a fervour that would be instantly identifiable as demagogy in a more expressive politician. At first, the prime minister’s rigid mask tricked Europeans into thinking she was a reasonable and capable person. It had a similar effect on the domestic audience...Her parochial mediocrity has nurtured the complacent assumption that the worst cannot happen here, that we are, at heart, a pragmatic nation not given to fanatical lurches.
The contempt and desperate management of any possible objection to Remaining is concluded thus:
It is obvious that Brexit is a disaster [except to half the country and a lot of MPs but we've devalued or ignored them], yet still so many MPs observe a taboo against saying that it should be stopped [perhaps because they don't think it should be -- and stopped how? By coup?]. To our continental friends and neighbours it is scarcely comprehensible. It looks like British social awkwardness [cultural cringe now?] elevated to the scale of a constitutional meltdown
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