Brexit

[Graham Breeze]

It was a terrible decision by May to sign up to this idea last December, one of many by the Government in this process.

May's deal is worse than Remaining, perhaps that was the idea of our Remain dominated Government and civil service all along.

Naturally, given a previous existence, my interest has always been the negotiation.

I think there was a general wish by May et al to technically comply with Brexit to satisfy the 52% but only just, to satisfy the 48%, compounded by a naivety that our previous "friends" in Europe would continue to treat us as friends in reaching a deal. So the mindset was not to walk away and pursue another model.

It then didn't help that eg Davis and Johnson are vacuous sound bites and bone idle.

If you want a good deal negotiation should never be done if you have a deadline. You need to believe that the other side will do you down if they can - they are not your friends. Etc etc.

When it became apparent that the French and Germans were determined to punish GB the clock had been ticking for a long time and it was then too difficult for the Govt. to admit they were on the wrong track, stop and rethink. A bit like fellrunners, "we are going in the wrong direction so let's run more quickly".

Way back on here I mused how Trump would have dealt with all this. Whatever you think of him as a human being (!) we certainly would not have ended up where we are now - but then not many people think Trump is a nice man to do business with.