In
dismissing the idea of allowing a second referendum on the final deal, the
Brexit Secretary said that agreeing to hold a second referendum would be giving
an incentive to the EU27 to negotiate a bad deal in the hope that the UK
electorate would reject it. There’s potentially
a grain of truth in that statement, of course – although, strictly speaking,
it’s more of an argument against announcing any such referendum in advance
rather than against actually holding one.
But
I can think of an even better way of incentivising ‘the other side’ to offer
only a bad deal. In essence, it consists
of telling them in advance that there is no way that we are going to change our
minds about leaving, whatever they offer, and that we’ll walk away with
absolutely nothing unless they give us what we want. Faced with that sort of approach to
negotiation, who wouldn’t feel incentivised to offer a bad deal?
Fortunately,
it’s not an approach that the all-wise and all-knowing UK Government would even
consider adopting, is it? Of course not;
that would be almost as silly as adopting the traditional ‘British way’ of
dealing with foreigners – threatening
them with war if they don’t give us what we want.
The
idea of a ‘Global Britain’ didn’t work out too well for much of the world last
time round on my reading of history; I’m not exactly confident that its
proponents have much idea about how to make it work this time round either.
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1 comment:
How can anyone take the UK Government serious anymore, 4 days after triggering Article 50, senior Tory MP’s are threatening a NATO ally. Yet it fits perfectly with BREXIT’s English exceptionalism narrative.
There is another school of thought on this farce, that’s it’s a kind of shock and awe via the Brexit establishment and tabloids to make Gibraltarians fall in line with the fundamentalist Brexiters world view and reject the EU totally, maybe it will work. Wales lapped it up after all.
This weekend’s events also reinforce my belief Theresa May and her clown show government will walk out of the EU without a deal, wreaking the UK and ensuring its break up – sweet irony indeed, England will finally have to look itself in the mirror and realise what it is, a medium sized European county without any imperial appendages and adjust to that reality.
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