Monday 10 December 2018

Theresa May's cowardly goalpost-shifting is a humiliation for Britain


Theresa May's last-minute efforts to postpone the meaningful Brexit vote are an absolute humiliation for Britain.

Just think back to her bombastic Lancaster House speech in early 2017 and how she unveiled her bad faith threat-based negotiating tactic of threatening to explode a ruinous "no deal" economic bomb under Britain and the EU if she didn't get her own way.

Threats; ridiculous red-lines; squandered leverage; continual appeasement of the ERG Brextremists in the Tory ranks; throwing away her parliamentary majority in her monumentally hubristic vanity election; repeatedly defying democratic accountability to the point of becoming the first government ever to be declared in contempt of parliament; running the whole Brexit show as a closed Tory shop with no input from opposition parties, devolved parliaments, UK business leaders, trade unions, academicas and experts, civic society, or anyone but her closed clique of Tory mates ...

Theresa May's appalling blend of authoritarianism and incompetence was always a recipe for disaster, but the Tories lapped it up in delight, and an astounding 13.6 million people flocked to the polls in June 2017 to actively endorse this hard-right, ultranationalist, and above all diplomatically incompetent farce.

Then in order to convince MPs to back the hopeless shambles she eventually cobbled together at the last minute she cynically resorted to threatening the anti-Brexit MPs with a ruinous "no deal" meltdown if they didn't support her (a "no deal" threat which she came up with in the first place!), whilst simultaneously threatening the pro-Brexit MPs with the possibility of "no Brexit" if they didn't support her!

But as the date of the meaningful vote approached, it became clear that only the Tory party ultra-loyalists were prepared to support it, so in a monumental act of cowardice she moved to delay the vote rather than face losing it.

This unbelievably cowardly decision reveals the pure self-interest that Theresa May is driven by. Her only instinct is to shamelessly defy the national interest by selfishly cling onto power for as long as possible.

It's clearly in the national interest to clear Theresa May's unpopular, unworkable, bad faith, threat-based, Tory shambles of a deal off the negotiating table and try a different approach, but she won't let it happen because she knows it would be absolutely the final straw for her tenure as Prime Minister.

But what's worse that Theresa May desperately trying to sideline parliamentary democracy and defy the national interest to keep clinging to power like a limpet composed of pure selfishness, is that she's behaving in this despicable manner in front of the entire world.

The EU 27 have been patiently waiting for the Tories to sort their act out for 30 tedious months, and then when it comes to the crunch, Theresa May puts her own self interest above the everything else and delays the vote.

Having our political leader cynically move the goalposts out of pure selfishness like this in front of the eyes of the world is an unprecedented humiliation for Britain.

So I hope the 13.6 million of you who flocked to the polls last year to actively endorse Theresa May and the Tories are proud of yourselves for the absolute humiliation you've inflicted on out country today.

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