Thursday 6 December 2018

An open letter to Theresa May: Why I won't be backing your Brexit proposals


Dear Theresa,

One of the only arguments I've actually heard anyone actually make in favour of your last-minute shambles of a Brexit proposal is that we need to forget that you are a cold-hearted, ruthless, and self-serving Tory and back your Brexit proposal because it wouldn't be as economically damaging as a "no deal" flounce out of the EU.

This argument has a kernel of truth because the economic chaos of a "no deal" meltdown would undoubtedly be worse than the illogical and almost universally unpopular mess you and your Tory mates have cobbled together.

And we all know that under Tory rule it would be the poor and vulnerable who would be forced to suffer the costs of a "no deal" meltdown (while your mates Rees-Mogg, Redwood and mega-rich speculator class who bankroll your party would actually cash in on the crisis they created by speculating against Britain).

Just look at the way you lot callously loaded the burden of austerity dogma onto poor and ordinary people as you simultaneously lavished tax cuts and handouts on your mega-rich mates (you know the ones who bankroll your party).


But then there are four gaping flaws this argument that 'we should all pull together and back your rubbish deal because "no deal" would be worse'.

The Closed Tory Shop

If you wanted parliament and the nation to back your deal then you really shouldn't have run the whole Brexit show as a closed Tory shop for the last two years.


Not only did you deliberately exclude opposition MPs, devolved parliaments, UK business leaders, trade unions, academics and experts, charities, civic society, and everyone else from having a say in the negotiations, but you also fought tooth and nail to sideline parliamentary democracy too.

How many times has your autocratic Brexit scheming been defeated in the courts, and voted down in our sovereign parliament?

How many times did you attempt to hide Brexit impact assessments and legal advice from parliament and the public?

How many times did your chums in the right-wing propaganda rags whip up tidal waves of abuse and death threats against anyone who tried to hold you to account over your dictatorial and self-serving Brexit scheming (judges, academics, opposition MPs, you own damnend Tory MPs ...)?


You've cynically and deliberately excluded everyone from involvement for the last two years in order to run Brexit purely in the Tory party interest, and now you've actually resorted to begging us to get on board to back the absolute farce you incompetent Tories have cobbled together without our involvement!

Sorry Theresa. No. You don't get to repeatedly exclude everyone else from involvement and then beg us for support because you failed to "crush" the opposition in your ridiculous vanity election.

Stupid threats

The only reason that the threat of "no deal" is on the table at all is your stupidly threatening approach to the Brexit negotiations.

You were the one who lobbed the threat of a ruinous "no deal" flounce onto the negotiating table with all of the bravado of a spoilt toddler threatening to deliberately shit their own pants if they don't get the sweeties they're demanding.

Of course you need to have a fallback position if the negotiations don't go the way you want, but threatening to explode a massive economic bomb under the UK in the desperate hope that fear of the collateral damage would drive the EU into caving into your demands is such a woeful display of strategic ineptitude that (despite your obvious limitations) it's still surprising that it was the best that you could come up with.

And it absolutely beggars belief that your mates in the right-wing propaganda rags actually lavished praise on you for your pathetic toddler-tantrum of a negotiating strategy.


The basis of any competent negotiating strategy would have been to identify areas of mutual agreement (of which there are surely several) in order to develop a reasonable fallback position should the full negotiations end up in deadlock.

That you didn't work towards a reasonably safe fallback position is bad enough, but that you're actually using your own hyperbolic threat in order to coerce your fellow citizens into backing the hopeless shambles of a deal you've eventually come up with is beyond reprehensible.

Using your own incompetence to your political advantage in this way is so utterly appalling there simply aren't enough negative adjectives in the English language to accurately describe it.


100% reversal

The next thing to note is that using the threat of a "no deal" meltdown in order to coerce people into supporting your shambles of a deal is a 100% reversal of your previous position.

Don't you remember your endlessly repeated mantra that "no deal is better than a bad deal"?

Yet now you suddenly want us to believe your new position that your shitty deal is better than a no deal?


How thick do you think we are?

How much contempt towards the rest of us does it demonstrate that you expect us to not even notice that you've absolutely and totally reversed your position?

Did you honestly expect nobody to notice?

What the hell are you playing at?

Two better options

The fourth nail in the coffin for the argument that we should support your woeful deal because it's not as bad as a bad deal is obvious.

If we're assessing the options on which would be least bad for the British people and the British economy, there are clearly two vastly superior options to the false dichotomy you're presenting us with.

One is to let someone else have a go at the negotiations. Someone who is prepared to do it in an open, democratic and accountable manner in the national interest, rather than excluding everyone else to do it exclusively for the benefit of their own political party like you did.

Someone who is prepared to set up a wide-ranging Brexit commission, seek political consensus, avoid threats and divisive language, and conduct extensive research into what kind of Brexit the people of Britain actually want from the Brexit they so narrowly voted for in 2016.


If we were to get rid of you and Britain went back to the EU for an extension of Article 50 so that we could negotiate a Brexit-in-the-British-interest rather than a Brexit-in-the-Tory-party-political-interest, it's highly unlikely they'd say no isn't it?

The other less harmful option is obviously to remain in the EU and then seek to reform it from within to give Britain (and other member states) more leeway to pursue their own national interests from within the union.

We can all see that you're deliberately excluding other superior options ("back to square one" / "Remain and reform") in order to present your second-worst case scenario as better than a worst case scenario derived from your own damned threats.

And we can all see that the only barrier to both of these vastly superior options is you.


Your autocratic power grab has failed. You threw away any chance of forcing your unpopular Tory Brexit through parliament when you gambled your parliamentary majority away in your spectacularly failed vanity election (a cock up you would already have been forced out over if the rest of your party weren't such abject self-serving cowards).

It's clearly time for you to step aside and let someone else try to fix this outrageous mess that you and your predecessor Cameron have lumbered us with.

Aside from wishing to see the back of you, I genuinely wish you a quiet retirement that affords you the time to contemplate and truly consider the enormous legacy of damage you and your fellow Tories have wreaked on our nation with your ruinous austerity agenda (that created the wave of public anger that drove the Brexit vote marginally over the line), Cameron's spectacularly reckless Brexit gamble with the nation's future, and your self-serving, autocratic, and downright incompetent efforts to deal with the absolute mess your predecessor ran away from.

Tom (and everyone who shares links to this letter on your social media accounts)


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