Tommy Tainant
Diamond Member
Theresa May in denial after her Salzburg ordeal | John Crace
If it hadn’t all been so numbingly inevitable, it might have been possible to feel sorry for Theresa May. Back in the UK, both remainers and leavers had pronounced her Chequers’ proposals to be dead in the water, but the prime minister had still travelled to the informal EU summit in Salzburg hoping for a stay of execution. A few luke-warm words and some insincere air kisses at the very least, until after she had survived the Conservative party conference. Her current range of vision really is that limited.
Instead she got a lesson in plain-speaking brutality. No attempts to sugar the pill, as EU leader after leader took it in turns to dismiss Chequers and to mock the UK over its lack of progress in its Brexit preparations. Even the Dutch thought they were better prepared for a no-deal Brexit than us. It was left to Donald Tusk, president of the EU council, to deliver the coup de grace. The Chequers’ deal was unworkable because it undermined the integrity of the single market. And, by the way, its solution to the Northern Ireland border was just fantasy.
Let me go on record and thank my Eurropean brothers and sisters for their strength of resolve and their support for peace and prosperity in an ungrateful UK. Lets get ready to rejoin our friends in Europe and rebuild the damage done by this nonsense.
If it hadn’t all been so numbingly inevitable, it might have been possible to feel sorry for Theresa May. Back in the UK, both remainers and leavers had pronounced her Chequers’ proposals to be dead in the water, but the prime minister had still travelled to the informal EU summit in Salzburg hoping for a stay of execution. A few luke-warm words and some insincere air kisses at the very least, until after she had survived the Conservative party conference. Her current range of vision really is that limited.
Instead she got a lesson in plain-speaking brutality. No attempts to sugar the pill, as EU leader after leader took it in turns to dismiss Chequers and to mock the UK over its lack of progress in its Brexit preparations. Even the Dutch thought they were better prepared for a no-deal Brexit than us. It was left to Donald Tusk, president of the EU council, to deliver the coup de grace. The Chequers’ deal was unworkable because it undermined the integrity of the single market. And, by the way, its solution to the Northern Ireland border was just fantasy.
Let me go on record and thank my Eurropean brothers and sisters for their strength of resolve and their support for peace and prosperity in an ungrateful UK. Lets get ready to rejoin our friends in Europe and rebuild the damage done by this nonsense.