Theresa May has a strong hand but she must play her cards right…or we’ll all lose
POKER-FACED Theresa May is about to sit down with EU hustlers for the final round of high-stakes Brexit.
Last week’s Commons victory over Remainers — a surprise to everyone including the PM herself — has given her a strong hand to play for Britain.
The PM has the unexpected authority of Parliament to scrub the hated Northern Ireland backstop. Her squabbling party has called a temporary truce. And nobody, including the EU, wants Jeremy Corbyn to take control.
Even Labour MPs are rallying behind her — at a price. And working-class voters have given the Tories a healthy seven-point lead. They might even win a snap election.
Played skilfully, this could win a deal that satisfies both Remainers and Leavers.
Yet there are fears Mrs May will use it to revive her wretched Chequers plan, which sparked the resignations of Boris Johnson and David Davis, or the botched deal thrown out last month by a 230-vote margin.
She has made a worrying start by apparently binning the No Deal card — the only one that truly scares the EU. Mrs May has no intention of playing this ace — and never had.
There are other worrying signs.
This showdown with EU hardliners requires fresh thinking and shrewd advice from seasoned players. Crawford Falconer, an ex-World Trade Organisation ambassador, was recruited by the Brexit department for precisely these skills.
Indeed, he is the ONLY person in the Government machine who has ever negotiated a trade deal.
Yet bafflingly, Mrs May is keeping this star player on the sidelines.
Instead, she will fly to Brussels with Whitehall mandarin Olly Robbins, the pro-EU fanatic who plunged Britain into the backstop trap she is now under pressure to escape from.
Robbins hates Brexit and has privately warned the PM this is Mission Impossible.
Mrs May — herself a Remainer who has never grasped the case for Brexit — will be joined by trusted “deputy PM” David Lidington, a dyed-in-the-wool Brussels worshipper.
In such company, even the inclusion in her team of a thundering Brexiteer Attorney-General Geoffrey Cox is only mildly reassuring.
Mrs May is notoriously stubborn. She can also be devious.
After nearly three years, even her closest political colleagues — who can be counted on one hand with a couple of missing digits — have no idea what her Brexit might look like.
Voters are increasingly irritated by this foot-dragging.
Why should we remain part of an organisation that wants to punish us by stealing Gibraltar, Northern Ireland and our car industry?
Nobody who watched the brutal humiliation of poor little Greece will be surprised. This tragic and insolvent nation should never have been admitted to the EU, still less the Eurozone.
Only with the assistance of US banking giant Goldman Sachs — “The Vampire Squid” — got them in under the wire. Once inside, they launched a borrowing and spending binge which ended in tears in the 2008 crash.
Greece might have flourished as a cheap but lovely tourist economy. Instead, it is now being cruelly tormented by Brussels and lumbered with multi-billion euros debts it can never repay.
Greece symbolises all that is wrong with arrogant Brussels — the catastrophic Euro, inflexible economic policies and mass unemployment for under-25s.
Above all, there is the sneering contempt of unsackable Eurocrats for the 500million people they rule from subsidised ivory towers.
Theresa May is a poor negotiator who never truly believed No Deal is better than a bad deal.
Without this implicit threat, Brussels will give little and demand much in return. It would be a pleasure to eat my words and watch Mrs May play a blinder.
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She can use her good luck to land a historic victory. Or she can blink and condemn Britain to colony status, paying billions more into EU coffers while being led by the nose on trade deal promises that never materialise.
In which case, forget about that snap election fantasy.
The Conservative Party would never be forgiven by the 17.4million voters who voted Brexit — or those who wish they had.
SECURITY CHIEFS are dusting off Cold War plans anticipating a Soviet nuclear strike to whisk the Queen to safety in the event of . . . er . . . a No Deal Brexit.
Presumably The Mall will be cleared of traffic and used as a landing strip to fly Her Maj out before revolutionary Remainers string her up for supporting Brexit.
The only question is whether she will go quietly.
The royals refused to leave London even after Buckingham Palace was bombed during the Second World War.
This Project Fear nonsense is even more insane than the idea that thousands will die of fruit shortages.
To quote Corporal Jones: “Don’t panic!!”
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