Exactly one year ago, the prime minister stood in Lancaster House and gave a speech setting out her Brexit plan. Following an embarrassing series of flip-flops, it now reads like a long list of broken promises and empty threats. [...]
The prime minister said she wanted the greatest possible access to the single market without being a member of it, her version of Boris Johnson’s cake-and-eat-it approach. She also knew this was going to be tricky to get. That is why she threatened to turn the UK into a Singapore-style tax haven while hinting that we would abandon cooperation with the EU on fighting terrorism if she didn’t get her way. [...]
The same goes for her “no deal … is better than a bad deal” mantra, which was given prime billing in the Lancaster House speech, and her promise that “the days of Britain making vast contributions to the European Union every year will end”. As it is, May has ended up promising £39bn to the EU to settle our past bills, and abandoned her “no-deal” bravado. [...]
We are told that she is preparing another big speech next month setting our her vision for our future relationship with the EU. If Lancaster House is anything to go by, we should expect the same combination of delusion and dishonesty – when the least the public deserves is realism.
No comments:
Post a Comment