After the Brexit vote, when Theresa May took over the job as prime minister from David Cameron, she famously said: Brexit means Brexit. Obviously, she had no clue what she was talking about.
Over time, she adapted to reality. The result is a kind of soft Brexit which is of course far away from what the Brexiters had promised to their audience. However, if you want to have full access to EU markets, you have to accept the rules and regulations in place.
The EU accounts roughly for half of the UK’s imports and exports. For France, Germany and other EU countries, the UK is an important trading partner, but does of course not account for half of their imports and exports. The situation is asymmetric. However, both the UK and the EU will lose in the case of a hard Brexit. It is damaging for everyone.
If you leave the EU and still want to have full access, you still have to conform to the EU legislation in place, you just can no longer influence it yourself because you are an outsider with no right to vote. Ask the Norwegians or the Swiss.
Theresa May is extremely stubborn and thinks her mission is to deliver some form of a Brexit. However, her deal is inacceptable both for the people who still believe the fairytales of the Leave campaign as well as for the ones who are for Remain because staying a member of the EU is the much better option.
No wonder, Brexiters and Remainers in parliament were united once and once only: when they said no to May’s deal with 432 against 202, a kind of defeat unseen since the 1920s! Theresa May continued as if nothing had happened. Her “plan B” was nothing else than “plan A”.
A protester in front of Westminster has best sumed it up with his sign which reads: “We already have the best deal.” Dear Theresa May, in short, when you are already in a hole, you should stop digging.
President Donald Trump talks with British Prime Minister Theresa May during a bilateral meeting in the Oval Office on January 27, 2017 (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead). This image is a work of an employee of the Executive Office of the President of the United States, taken or made as part of that person’s official duties. As a work of the U.S. federal government, the image is in the public domain.
Article added on January 25, 2019 at 14:22 Ukrainian time.
