According to Le Monde, for the second time, the British Parliament has rejected the agreement negotiated by Theresa May on Brexit. Which means that it is five minutes to midnight and they are now looking at the abyss. I think they’re going to ask the EU for a delay. And then another and another because, in the European Union, nothing is really decided except a deadly austerity policy that must always prevail no matter how misguided. But the meaning is the beginning of what I believe will be a long, perhaps endless series of delays is that we will live essentially forever on the brink of disaster. It also means that the county of my youth has been destroyed by a bunch of fools and posers.
England today is a country where all the politicians, and especially the Conservative ones, are fools, posers and morons. Why is it so difficult for these idiots to see the need for a second referendum? As the saying goes, it would be funny if it weren’t so tragic.
Update:
I don’t understand what any of this business of the House of Commons setting its own agenda means. Apparently, this new group of Conservative MP’s will somehow define the agenda without consulting the government. But the May government will not fall, for reasons that are idiotic and concerned only with the internal politics of the Conservative Party (and, naturally, the ambitions of the next Prime Minister, Boris “the Clown” Johnson). I’m totally confused. How does that break the deadlock? There is no appetite for May’s deal with the EU, no appetite for no deal (except among the hardcore fools) and yet they do not allow a second referendum. So, what’s the way forward?
But beyond all this confusion, it seems that the United Kingdom, against all logic, believes that it has control of the decision-making process and can dictate the timetable despite the harsh speeches of Tusk and Macron and the deadline of 22 May. This seems to be the foolish hypothesis that runs through all the Brexit madness; that England can dictate the terms of an agreement to which the EU must abide. But why is that? Yes, trade with the UK is important, but the EU economy is much larger, more diversified and probably more resilient.
This notion of British control over the process is absurd but the extension of the deadline granted “reluctantly” by the EU is only fueling this illusion and the related illusion that the British Parliament has the luxury of taking the time it wants to find something equally acceptable for the lunatic hardcore Brexiters. But, of course, it was May’s policy of unreasoning appeasement of the hardcore Brexiters that put the United Kingdom in this jackpot in the first place.
A closely related problem, I think, is that the EU’s reputation for delay and ambiguity means that no deadline is taken seriously, because the consequences of a Brexit “without agreement” are so horrible that you have to “extend” an extension. But the fundamental principles do not change and the pressures that the EU intends to apply are ineffective because of the universally accepted assumption that it will yield and then surrender.
And so, Britain and the EU continue to live precariously on the edge of the abyss, neither together nor divorced. Every time we are told that there will no longer be an extension of time, followed by the inevitable extension, the conviction is that there will be no firm deadline. Until, of course, the EU finally says no, and we all plunge into the abyss.
Mitch Guthman's Blog 