I don't understand all the votes in Parliament and negotiations between Conservatives and Labour. There are only three choices on the table: the Brexit deal already negotiated with the EU (already voted down three times), no deal Brexit, and delay, which requires the consent of all EU members. After three years of futzing around, the UK has seven days to make up its mind. Ostriches spring to mind.
The trouble, as I see it, is this: the Conservatives are apparently dominated by inner cliques of power brokers who imagine themselves still in the times of Queen Victoria, and would simply send in a gunboat, had we one frightening enough today, to settle all disputes by force. Of course, to have that fun, first they need a dispute, and as there isn't one, one has to be invented, hence the demonizing of Europe and calls for Brexit. The original call for a referendum was precisely an attempt to quell, hopefully once and for all, the inner class turmoil of the Conservative party, a risk taken because it was never seriously considered a real risk; Cameron was a man of too much faith in his people.
The voting populace is not the most highly informed one in the world. The result is a mass of adult souls looking for political leaders who just fill its head with differently-coloured promises of easy, fantasy money and jobs based on the assumption that the rest of the world needs Britain for some special, unique and usually unidentified talents that it has. The way out of having to qualify these assurances is diversion: blame somebody else, usually poorer people from abroad, willing to do work that the proud Brits find unpalatable because it's a bit tough and boring, and probably not as well-paying as are the various "benefit" schemes that experts can plough. It's never made clear who, exactly, would then fill the rôles that the migrant workers currently do. Who will offer to pick fruit and vegetables, wait on tables and slave in commercial kitchens, clean bedrooms in hotels, work terrible hours as nurses - the list is never ending? And if they think the answer to making those jobs attractive to white Brits is raising the pay grade of them, great, they must expect their own outgoings to be increased in proportion every time they go outside their home. It might come as a surprise to many voters, but governments don't have money, only the taxpayers provide it; for governments to spend it, somebody has to lose it in taxation.
So basically, voters can look upon the European concept as a threat from abroad, or as an opportunity to travel, live and work abroad
if they so choose, as a right, and not something that can only be done by special invitation. This is obviously why Europe, as a concept, appeals more to the young: the young are of an age where their lives are not set in stone and they can make choices. The old and about-to-retires have no such choice unless they have saved up enough money and/or have a good enough pension plan to allow them to move to a less severe clime in which to spend their final years. Which is why there are so many retired Brits in southerm Europe: it's not so goddam cold and bleak!
May's deal is, we are told repeatedly both by the lady hersef as by the Europeans, the only consensus to which they could arrive and agree. That seems to me a statement of fact, not prelude to further arguments.
According to the government's, business and the Bank of England reports and reseach on the matter, it's the only option that is less bad than crashing out without a deal, the best of all options being the status quo.
I can think of no business that would turn its back on its existing best client in order to chase fantasy clients who have made no offers at all. Some think of the USA as a replacement client. Britain
already has zillions invested in American companies; it's what the financial muscle of London was so good at doing all around the world; Brexit can emasculate that at a stroke. If anyone in the UK rust belts thinks Trump is going to break his public promise to his own rustbelts by switching work to the UK... hell, he's even holding a gun to his own industries that have branches in Mexico, right next door!
So yes, after all this time, British politicians are still messing about. Why? Because both major parties are split internally into several warring factions and neither wants to have the others win. It is not about the national interest alone, but about those political parties and conflicted political interests. That's why, in a nod to
national interest they vote to make a no deal exit impossible (as if they were the only players here) but they nevertheless cannot accept the only deal available because it clashes with some of their internal political ambitions. I was going to refer to them as beliefs, but I don't think they really have any beliefs anymore.
