Michael Gove has said in the last couple of days that the EU is refusing to negotiate with the UK. Well, duh! From their point of view the negotiation has already taken place and a deal agreed. They’ve also said repeatedly the Withdrawal Agreement is not open to renegotiation so the matter is closed. There wouldn’t be anyone to negotiate with. The British representatives would walk into an empty room, sit down at the table and proceed to talk only to themselves and achieve nothing. The EU’s negotiating team has been disbanded, because as far as they are concerned, they’ve reached an agreement for Britain to leave the EU. It’s the British Parliament that has decided it doesn’t like the deal and wants to start again. And now we’re being told we can’t, we’re having a strop and throwing our toys out of the pram.
All the fault in this debacle can be laid at the feet of successive Tory governments who have bungled their way through this whole calamitous affair. Why was this ever an issue? Britain had quite possibly the best terms of membership for the EU. Britain was not a member of the single currency, was being paid an enormous rebate, had representation in the democratic body and a veto on all legislation that passed through the chamber. And yet to try and keep his party together and in power, David Cameron decided to try and dictate the outcome of a public vote to achieve what was good for his party and his leadership of it, over what was best for the country. And once that advisory non-binding referendum had returned a marginal majority that was not and could not be an accurate gauge of what the country felt on the issue of leaving the EU.
And the nonsense continued as Theresa May performed a 180 degree turn to form a government to try and deliver something she hadn’t campaigned for, aligning herself to those who wanted a much more decisive break with the EU to try and gain the support necessary to bulldoze the legislation through Parliament, also trying to dictate the outcome of a public vote before having to move even further towards the Brexiteers side to gather enough support to limp on. And then, the deal she managed to cobble together at the eleventh hour was defeated by the largest majority ever suffered by a Prime Minister in the House of Commons. And then defeated twice more. And now that she’s gone, we have a man driven by his ego, making promises he knows full well he can’t keep, leading the country down the river with so much as a life jacket, never mind a canoe or a paddle.
All the negatives in this situation come from Britain’s side. We’re the ones that decided to tell the EU where to shove it. We’re the ones that decided the deal we’d negotiated wasn’t good enough. The EU has been clear from the start that they would prefer Britain to stay in the Union but there was one chance to negotiate an exit. We blew it. Not only did we start the whole thing, we then didn’t prepare out of arrogance. So, I’m sorry Mr Gove. It’s not that the EU doesn’t want to negotiate. They already have. They don’t want to negotiate AGAIN.
Eat, Sleep, Blog, Repeat 