I wrote about Brexit a while ago, but it has raised its ugly head “bigly”, as Trump would say.
More time is spent in Parliament on Brexit than on everything else combined, which is probably as it should be, as it’s a major change for this country.
I have a simple view of how a timeline for this would have gone:
- referendum – we are going to leave
- government gets ministers (and maybe others) together and decides clearly how we are leaving, what we want from the process, what it will be like afterwards etc. A plan ahead is agreed (yes, it’ll be a compromise and everyone will be unhappy to some extent, but at least there will be a plan). This process takes as long as it takes.
- Article 50 is triggered. Two years to negotiate with the EU. The clock ticks.
- we negotiate, more compromises but a solution.
- we leave.
Article 50 was triggered in March 2017, so we leave in March 2019. But, to hugely misquote George Harrison, Lewis Carroll et al, if you don’t know where you’re going, how do you know when you’ve arrived.
So Prime Minister May got her troops together last Friday to discuss a post-Brexit plan, in other words, step 2. No doubt there were disagreements, and apparently the ministers were treated like naughty children, having their phones confiscated and so on. But in the end, we are told, they all came out unified.
Then Brexit minister David Davis thinks about it all, decides he’s not having it and resigns. Boris Johnson is also unhappy about the plan, and also that Davis may make a bid for the Conservative leadership/PM job, something he thinks is rightfully his, so he resigns too.
More have gone today. Mrs May’s party/the government is in total chaos. Apparently Mrs May was told that unless the agreed Brexit plan is withdrawn, more will resign on a regular basis. As I have been writing this, two more have gone.
The country is in a mess.
Mrs May appeared in Parliament yesterday and put a brave face on. I don’t understand her.
Maybe she is hugely intelligent and I am missing something.
Maybe she wants to be the most hated/worst PM of all time. Trump clearly is the worst USA President and Thatcher definitely the worst PM of modern times, but no-one would really want that on their gravestones, would they?
Maybe she has a big ego. Maybe she really believes that people like her.
Maybe she is delusional.
Maybe it is all a clever plot to get out before it gets worse.