I thought this article in The Times (HERE) was interesting. It's about how time is ticking away and how it may soon be too late to salvage anything from the trade talks. Decisions are needed right now but they are not being taken because of deep and serious divisions in cabinet. The article says:
Theresa May needs to decide what the point of her premiership is. She must know, deep down, that parliamentary time is too tight and civil service capacity too scarce for the next year to be about anything other than Brexit. Yet she is so paralysed by cowardice that the government is not even moving forward with that. Her equivocation over the future relationship is not just politically unbecoming. It is fatal to the negotiation. The Brexit talks that matter most — those between the EU27 — are happening right now. Our government should be driving that conversation. Instead it twiddles its proverbial thumbs.
But this absolutely excoriating critique of Mrs May isn't the worst of it. Listen to this quote from an unnamed EU diplomat from a European country said to be most sympathetic to the Britain's position:
“When Theresa May talks about Brexit, we hear the captain of the Titanic talking about an iceberg that works for everyone.”
When even our friends laugh at us what hope is there?
Where the article hits the nail on the head is the amount of civil service and parliamentary time that will be taken up in organising Brexit, and not just for this year, but for years to come. New UK bodies will be needed to replace the EU agencies that we will exit from. New agricultural and fishing policies, new environmental and trade policies as well as new customs regimes and facilities. The list is endless. By 2030, as the economy slowly sinks under the weight of change to virtually everything in our national life, the population will regret that Brexit was ever suggested and Farage will have to grow a beard and live under an assumed name in Patagonia. This will be the bright spot for me.
