We weep for Theresa May’s Brexit tactics — her ‘single market for goods’ plan is a pitiful compromise
The PM's latest compromise is not a plan as the EU will always call back for more - and what else does she have?
WHATEVER we offer Brussels won’t be enough. That is the only certain thing in these bewildering Brexit negotiations.
The Government’s latest compromise is to agree to stay in the single market for goods. To which the EU’s Michel Barnier will inevitably reply: “No. It’s full single market membership, including free movement of migrants, or nothing.”
Then what? What else has No10 got?
There are red lines Theresa May must not cross: free movement, independent trade deals, our courts’ supremacy. She won’t survive conceding on any of them.
We weep for Downing Street’s tactics.
They seem terrified that the PM might have to walk out of talks. Why? If the EU continues to demand everything on its terms, she must do exactly that.
They’ll call back.
Liability Leo
GOBBY Irish PM Leo Varadkar has no idea how much damage he does with every Brexit utterance.
His latest salvo revealed a patronising, pompous arrogance as misplaced as it was sickening.
The mighty EU won’t change its rules for little Britain, Varadkar sneered.
“We’re 27 member states — the UK is one country,” he said. “We’re 500million people, the UK is 60million. That basic fact has to be understood.”
The Sun has some more basic facts:
Ireland’s population is 4.8million. The UK’s is 66.5million.
Ireland’s economy relies on us so heavily that a “no deal” is forecast to throw 2.5 per cent of its workforce on the dole. It is far more exposed than any other EU country, or the UK.
Our billions bailed out broke Ireland in 2010. Has Varadkar forgotten?
Is he happy to sour relations with millions of UK customers with long memories, who may take against Irish goods?
A wiser man would have acted as peacemaker, constructively helping both sides forge a historic deal in all our interests, including those of his country and its wonderful people.
Instead he chose another role . . . as the snivelling suck-up egging on the playground bullies.
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Save Nato, PM
THERESA May must seize her crucial opportunity to save Nato next month.
Donald Trump is rightly berating Europe’s major powers for failing, unlike Britain, to fund their defence. But Nato is not some unfavourable trade deal he can abandon at a stroke.
Mrs May hosts his UK visit on July 13, right after he’s laid the law down at the Nato summit and before he flies out to meet Vladimir Putin. She must stress that lives are at stake. That the West’s security has relied on Nato for 70 years.
And that it would be a disaster for the President to undermine it now, with Russia an increasing global menace.