It's one full year since EU referendum day, and Theresa May has stalled Brexit so successfully that there has just been one single negotiation with the EU in the entire year!
In light of this year-long delaying game she's been playing, it's absolutely astounding that Brexit supporters aren't totally livid with her.
Last year I argued against Brexit not because I was against the idea in principle, but from the pragmatic perspective that signing a blank contract with the hard-right fringe of the Tory party to make Brexit up as they go along would lead to absolute chaos, which is exactly what is happening in front of our eyes.
If I had been a Brexit supporter, I'd be absolutely furious with the way Theresa May has spent the last year obfuscating and stalling in order to slow the Brexit process down as much as possible, but somehow millions of Brexit voters are so gullible that they uncritically believe the words that come out of her mouth, rather than subjecting any of her actual actions to critical scrutiny.
- Between her undemocratic coronation as Prime Minister in July 2016 (achieved when Theresa May's supporters bullied Andrea Leadsom out of the leadership contest) and January 2017 Theresa May did nothing much apart from spout utterly meaningless platitudes like "Brexit means Brexit" (a six month delay).
- In January 2017 Theresa May decided to sour UK-EU relations by announcing that the centrepiece of her so-called negotiating strategy would be a threat to trigger a massive economic crisis by stropping away from the negotiating table with nothing, then turn the UK into a universally despised corporate tax haven! The idea that infuriating the EU by stalling them for six months then taking such a belligerent approach to the negotiations is compatible with a smooth and orderly Brexit is ludicrous fantasy land gibberish (souring diplomatic negotiations with the EU is a woefully inept strategy that is likely to significantly prolong the Brexit negotiation period).
- Instead of putting her Article 50 bill through parliament Theresa May spent valuable time (and a significant sum of taxpayers' money) fighting, and losing, court battles to overthrow parliamentary sovereignty and impose Article 50 as a despotic leader who gets to make things up as they go along with no democratic oversight (an insult to democracy, a huge waste of time and money and another two month delay between January and March 2017).
- Immediately after triggering Article 50 and setting the clock ticking on the most complex diplomatic negotiations the UK has ever faced Theresa May called her vanity election (another two month delay).
- After throwing away her parliamentary majority in one of the most inept political manoeuvres in history, Theresa May sent David Davis to the first day of negotiations in which he completely abandoned his demands for parallel trade talks, and agreed with the EU that the separation deal, migrants' rights and the Irish border issue come first (a glaring demonstration that the Tory Brexiteers had spent the previous 11 months completely wasting their time on ridiculous fantasies that immediately got binned the moment the negotiations actually started).
- On the anniversary of the EU referendum Theresa May decided to throw an absolute insult of an offer to the EU on protecting citizens' rights. She basically lowered her knickers and did a great big shit on the negotiating table, and the hard-right bully boys in the UK right-wing press are going to attack the EU as evil monsters if they don't gratefully eat it up. Insulting the EU (and all of the 4 million+ UK and EU citizens who live on the other side of the proposed Brexit border) with such a lowball starting offer on citizens' rights is clearly another delaying tactic. Instead of quickly agreeing to a sensible compromise with the EU, Theresa May wants to drag out the preliminary negotiations over citizens' rights for as long as possible in order to delay the beginning of the trade talks (a grotesque use of people's lives as bargaining chips to be haggled over, and another glaringly obvious delaying tactic).
It's quite something that Theresa May's endless repetition of meaningless Brexit platitudes are easily sufficient to mollify millions of pro-Leave people who should be absolutely bloody livid with her for blatantly stalling their beloved Brexit at every single turn.
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