Puzzled or infuriated by what’s happening in the House of Commons around Brexit? It’s called democracy. Democracy is supposed to be messy when big decisions are at stake.
The EU does not want the UK in the EU anymore. It is too Socialist and the UK is too Free Market. The EU countries love being run by administrators who went to good schools - like the ENA - while the politicians are rendered powerless by their lack of education and inability to make friends. Quick, how many European countries have a two-party system? Yep. The UK. The EU wants an European Army and there is no way that Her Majesty - the C-in-C of the UK’s Armed Forces - is turning her lads over to a Belgian General who is at the behest of a bunch of unelected officials. The EU wants the unrestricted immigration of unskilled, uneducated young men from all over the world who have been thrown out of their home towns and villages for bad behaviour. The UK thinks would rather have well-behaved, educated, skilled people who speak English from all over the world.
Theresa May has known this all along. So did David Cameron. What do you think MI6 and GCHQ have been doing all this time?
The EU bureaucrats and other elitists thought that they could do a deal and not involve Parliament. Really. That’s elitists for you. Theresa May knew that even if she got The Best Deal Ever, she would have to present it to Parliament. This is because the UK is a democracy. There aren’t many of those in the world, so it’s not surprising that you don’t recognise one in action when you see it.
No negotiator, no Cabinet member, not the Prime Minister, nor even HRH QE2, can decide the terms on which the UK leaves the EU. Only the elected representatives of the British people can do that. Only they can do it, because only they can lose their jobs if they go too far against the wishes of their constituents. Read that again carefully: unless I can get rid of you, you don’t get to make decisions that affect me. That’s the basis of democracy.
Those elected representatives have had their orders for a long time. The opinion polls confirm month after month that those orders have not changed. Sovereign courts and border control. Free trade is a nice-to-have.
Hence Theresa May had to work hard to get the best deal from the EU that she could get. So we would see how devious and one-sided it was. She has to champion that deal, because it is her deal. The House of Commons should rightly reject the deal and send her back to the EU to re-negotiate. Because they know that the EU never folds until 23:59:59. And if it isn’t going to fold, it has to be the EU who is shown to be intransigent and devious.
It’s supposed to be all about The Backstop. The Irish border is the biggest non-issue in contemporary politics. Anyone who makes it one is effectively threatening us with a new IRA / UDA bombing campaign. Everyone knows this, and no-one is going to make a decision about the UK’s political status on threat of a few IRA bombs. We did this already. Remember? Bombing the British doesn’t work. We’re stubborn like that.
Right now, the matter is in the hands of the members of the House of Commons. No lawyer predicts the jury decision. I hope they feel they have blustered too loud now to turn and accept the deal after Christmas. Unless it turns out that when Junker clarifies ‘No’ he means ‘Yes’. The Honourable Members will not be voting for a hard Brexit, but for more negotiations. If the EU refuses, the EU will be the one forcing a hard Brexit.
So expect lots of noise about preparing for a hard Brexit. Which is, I repeat, something that your employer should have done already. My suspicion is that most companies will have done this, or replaced their EU business with exports somewhere else. If you are working for a company that does business in Europe, and does not know how it will carry on if the UK is not in a free-trade zone with Europe, look for another employer NOW. And ask the interviewers what their hard Brexit plans are.
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