Blame Brussels for this mess... and walk away!
IT DIDN’T have to be this way. Had the Brussels bullies not been set on punishing the UK for daring to exercise our democratic rights, and had Theresa May not drastically weakened her negotiating position in that disastrous election, it could all have been so different.
A smooth, commerce-focused Brexit transition would have been possible, an outcome that remains in both parties’ interests. Instead, after two years of negotiation, the Prime Minister’s dreadful deal has been tossed on the garbage heap where it belongs.
The promise of Brexit is being snatched away from the 17.4 million people who voted for it by malicious bureaucrats and incompetent ministers.
When I voted to leave two-anda-half years ago I never imagined the process would have ended up here. Perhaps I shouldn’t have had such confidence that the EU would negotiate in good faith. With a £95billion trade surplus in goods, it makes no sense to end free trade with one of their biggest markets.
It is now clear that commercial considerations never entered Brussels’ way of thinking. The desire to keep their bureaucratic machine whirring and hold the cosy political club of Europe together is reflected in the mess we now find ourselves in.
I am utterly convinced that other countries were also keen on an exit from the monstrous bureaucracy the EU had become.
The initial idea of a community of countries trading freely has morphed into an unaccountable behemoth issuing diktats from above.
The burden to businesses across the continent has created agitation for change and Brexit would have only been the start. The powers-that-be in Brussels spotted this and have been set on hanging us out to dry ever since, willingly harming themselves in the process.
To combat this, the UK required strong, decisive leadership. We didn’t get it. This dreadful compromise, in the form of the Withdrawal Agreement, is the result of someone who doesn’t believe in the cause being put in charge of the process. In my many years in business, I have never sent someone into a negotiation who didn’t believe in what we were trying to achieve.
Yet that is exactly what we have done with the most important issue facing the country for a generation.
This agreement should never have got off the ground.
The Chequers deal should have been chucked out when it was clear it satisfied neither Remain nor Leave voters... which was virtually immediately.
A strong, resilient leader would have understood this. Instead, accepting that what the Brussels bully boys had said was their best offer, the Prime Minister has reaped what she sowed with Parliamentary humiliation last week. Had the Withdrawal Agreement passed it would have left Britain in a permanent halfway house with the European Union.
This would have been worse than remaining fully in and certainly worse than leaving without a deal.
THIS would also have left us taking burdensome regulation after burdensome regulation, without any say on how they were made. It would have hampered our ability to strike trade deals with those parts of the world growing far quicker than our European neighbours.
No-deal is considerably more favourable and may now be our only option.
Recently, the Prime Minister has resorted to deplorable scare tactics about no-deal, having the gall to warn the 17.4 million people who voted Leave that No Brexit is increasingly likely.
Warnings of no food and no medicine are an absolute nonsense that reveal the Government’s increasingly sneering attitude towards its people.
While I don’t doubt that there will be short-term turbulence, the UK’s economy and businesses are resilient and will increasingly grasp the opportunity to sell to newer, bigger markets across the globe.
This was never possible under Theresa May’s proposed deal.
Recent weeks have also seen growing calls for an extension to, or a complete revocation of, Article 50.
The argument goes that the Government will need more time to strike a deal, hold a general election or second referendum.
I fail to see what more time will achieve.
We have already had two-anda-half years and got absolutely nowhere.
‘No-deal is more favourable and may now be our only option’