Christopher Booker is a close colleague of Dr Richard North - they've written a book together and co-authored columns at The Telegraph and The Mail. He has written his weekly column (HERE behind a paywall) where he says, "if the Brexit negotiations are a game of chess, Theresa May is dangerously close to checkmate". Read the whole piece HERE.
He also uses the word zugzwang, a term from chess, which means a player has got themselves into a position where any possible future move will be disastrous. This is where he thinks we are at the moment.
He also uses the word zugzwang, a term from chess, which means a player has got themselves into a position where any possible future move will be disastrous. This is where he thinks we are at the moment.
The options, according to Booker are to accept the deal 'imposed on us by the EU' - in other words Mrs May's deal, the one called 'monstrous' by Bill Cash and 'even worse' than staying in the EU (HERE) by Dominic Raab - or leaving without a deal at all (cataclysmic says Jeremy Hunt the Foreign Secretary).
Booker himself calls the no deal scenario, "the worst possible option of all: an economic, social and political catastrophe far greater than most people have yet begun to imagine, as we shall only discover when it hits us". He says we are sliding towards this by default.
Those of us who want to stop Brexit are "Another bunch [that] clamours ever more loudly for a second referendum, which would take months to set up and plunge the country into an even more toxic state of chaos than it is in already".
Unfortunately, he doesn't offer us his solution.
The crisis he describes is one of leadership. Sooner or later the public will have to be told the truth. Leaving without a deal is not, as Theresa May has consistently suggested, better than a bad deal. She will have to address the nation and explain that it is, in fact, unthinkable. It will take a bit of doing but the nation cannot be irreparably damaged in order to save her face for a another few months.
The 'economic, social and political catastrophe' Booker speaks of is not inevitable at all, it could easily be solved by the PM writing a letter revoking Article 50. There may be howls of anguish and it would be political suicide for her personally, but there are some things far more important than the legacy of prime ministers. May's legacy is in tatters anyway. She could go some way to repairing it by finally doing the right thing.
Brexit will ultimately have to be reversed one way or the other. It didn't make sense in 2016 and now, in 2019, it makes even less sense. All we need is someone to explain why.
The crisis he describes is one of leadership. Sooner or later the public will have to be told the truth. Leaving without a deal is not, as Theresa May has consistently suggested, better than a bad deal. She will have to address the nation and explain that it is, in fact, unthinkable. It will take a bit of doing but the nation cannot be irreparably damaged in order to save her face for a another few months.
The 'economic, social and political catastrophe' Booker speaks of is not inevitable at all, it could easily be solved by the PM writing a letter revoking Article 50. There may be howls of anguish and it would be political suicide for her personally, but there are some things far more important than the legacy of prime ministers. May's legacy is in tatters anyway. She could go some way to repairing it by finally doing the right thing.
Brexit will ultimately have to be reversed one way or the other. It didn't make sense in 2016 and now, in 2019, it makes even less sense. All we need is someone to explain why.
