Where is Labour as ‘no deal’ threatens?

IF only the political beast of the past would roar once more, as David Williamson suggests in the Western Mail. If only Gordon Brown and David Miliband would join forces with Ken Clarke, Keir Starmer and Vince Cable to form a cross-party consensus to put a stop to the grievous self-harm of “Brexit means Brexit” when this failed government clearly doesn’t have a clue what it means.

Brexit does not have to mean leaving the single market and the customs union because Mrs May appears to hold a grudge against the European Court of Justice, which she has possibly confused with the European Court of Human Rights where, as Home Secretary, she lost deportation cases. Her appointments of Boris Johnson as Foreign Secretary, David Davis as chief negotiator, and Liam Fox as minister for exiting the EU show gross misjudgement in thinking that this promotion of leading Brexiteers would strengthen her position. Instead we have the predictable result that Brexit is now a political football for them to try for their goal of taking over her job, which would be an own goal for Britain, because Brexit is a disastrous own goal.

Labour has left this open goal defenceless against the looming disaster of crashing out of the EU without a deal when the shadow trade minister tells Andrew Marr that HM’s loyal opposition cannot intervene because they are not at the negotiation table. What kind of opposition cannot even offer an alternative to a failed government that should now fall after the DUP has pulled the rug from under them, despite their £1.5bn bribe?

Of course Northern Ireland should stay in the single market and the customs union, and so should all of us. Crashing out without a deal will crash the economy and give the Brexiteers their Pyrrhic vctory Margaret Phelps

Penarth