"A negotiation is a negotiation"

Theresa My has been building quite a reputation for evasiveness, cowardice and bad faith debating tactics, but she managed to take it to a whole new level in a quick quiz interview with Tim Shipman of the Times.

Elements of the mainstream press picked up on the fact that she refused to give straight answers to even the most mundane of questions, but the stand out for me was her extraordinary answer to a question about whether she had the strength to stand up to the hard-right Eurosceptics in her party and avoid a catastrophic "no deal" nuclear Brexit.

The only even remotely straight answer is
the question about shoes!

Nobody with an ounce of political sense really gives a damn whether Theresa May prefers Sherlock or Midsummer Murders, or whether she'd rather eat Chinese or a curry (she evaded answering both questions though) but the question of whether she is a strong enough leader to avoid marching the UK off a cliff edge into an economic abyss because that's what the hard-right of her own party want, well that's a proper question that deserves a proper answer.

Theresa May's response to this question was quite extraordinary:

"We are going into a negotiation and a negotiation is a negotiation"

Imagine the level of arrogant contempt necessary to consider that meaningless gibberish to be an acceptable answer to a serious question about the future prosperity of our nation.

Brexit means Brexit

This meaningless "a negotiation is a negotiation" nonsense is even worse than "Brexit means Brexit".

At least we knew "Brexit means Brexit" was just a glib meaningless platitude designed to disguise the fact that the Tories were stalling for time as they desperately tried to cobble together some kind of plan of action to deal with the chaos they had unleashed.

At least it was a shit evasive answer to "what does Brexit actually mean?" type questions.

"A negotiation is a negotiation" isn't even an evasive non-answer to anything, let alone the actual question she was asked.

Why do people actually like this?

According to the polls Theresa May is one of the most popular Prime Ministers since opinion polling became a thing, which is an absolute mystery to me.

Theresa May's popularity suggests that there's a significant proportion of the UK electorate who actually like being fobbed off with evasive and insultingly meaningless non-answers to important questions. Presumably because they believe that they, and the rest of "the lower orders", are to lowly and unimportant to deserve proper answers, and that these things are best left to our lords and masters to decide amongst themselves.

The other explanation is that they're so incredibly stupid that they simply can't tell the difference between a real answer to a question, and a load of tangential and essentially meaningless drivel.

If you can see Theresa May give these evasive and meaningless answers to question, after question after question, yet you still like her, you're either a subservient forelock-tugging groveller with such low self-esteem that you feel you don't deserve to hear questions answered properly, or you're so god-damned stupid that you're incapable of even realising that she evades pretty much every question she's asked.

Is our great nation really stuffed so full of craven forelock-tuggers who think they don't deserve proper answers to questions, and cognitive illiterates who can't even see the difference between a real answer and a load of contemptuous drivel?

I guess we're going to find out pretty soon ...

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