As the Brexit negotiations proceed it is becoming ever more clear that their primary intention is to use the divorce settlement as a crude ransom demand. It is obvious that because they believe that the Remoaners are willing to pay any price for a trade deal, and because they think that those Remoanerscan force the government to agree with their position, they are ratcheting up the final figure and trying to force us to pay it as the entry price into trade talks. Meanwhile the likes of George Osborne, Michael Heseltine, Peter Mandelson and Tony B Liar are continuing their campaign of Project Fear in a crude attempt to frighten those they regard as the ignorant poor people who voted to leave to change their minds and simply surrender to all the EU's demands.
What are those demands? They are pretty large. As well as trying to force us to continue to bankroll the PIGS (Portugal Ireland, Greece and Spain), they also want us to carry on paying, in perpetuity, a part the huge pensions of all the European bureaucrats, civil servants, MEPs and associated hangers-on who got us into this mess in the first place. Also they want us to continue to accept the supremacy of the European Court of Justice and the Human Rights courts. They want us to carry on accepting economic refugees from Eastern Europe and take a quota of the tide of illegal migrants flooding, unchecked, across the mediterranean onto the European continent. They want all of these concessions before they will even think about a trade deal.
Let's just stop to consider this for a moment. We give up all our rights to self-government, a shedload of cash up-front and we promise to carry on paying them loads more cash for an indeterminate time into the future. Once we have done this we then start another set of separate negotiation with they same bunch of gangsters and extortioners who have just mugged us. Would you?
Who is to say where they will set the price for access to their so called "Free Market?" I guess that one of the concessions they will ask for is to demand that we remain in the Customs Union and another will be a promise to continue to obey and implement all the regulatory nonsense that will continue to pour out of Brussels. The truth is that if we cave in to just the minimum of what they are asking then how will we have left the European Union.? They will still control our borders, our economy, our laws and our ability to trade freely with the rest of the world. All of this to have nothing more than we started with for a huge price.
Of course I realise that we cannot leave the EU without having to make some concessions. Mrs May has already indicated that we will meet all our legally outstanding commitments, We will continue to offer places to European citizens for them to live, work and prosper here in the UK, We will, where necessary, strive to make the goods and services we supply to them compliant with their standards. We will continue with our policies to offer succor and sanctuary to those who are genuinely fleeing from being persecuted or who fear they will be persecuted on account of
race, religion, nationality, and/or membership in a particular social group or
political opinion; policies which we have held in place for hundreds of years, before many of the current members of the EU even acknowledged the concept. I don;t think we need to take lessons in compassion or freedoms from the EU; as the people of Catalonia about that.
In order to make any negotiations work both parties must enter into them knowing that "No Deal Is Better Than A Bad Deal". This applies to both sides. If the EU can't succeed in bullying or intimidating us and if they genuinely feel that what we are offering is unacceptable then they too must tell us that they are prepared to walk away.
They have accused us of not offering concessions, "cherry picking" and "wanting to have our cake and eat it: I find it interesting that in such circumstances they have made little or no mention that they might want to end the talks and walk away. If their position is so strong and they can do so well without us why are they bothering to negotiate at all? I am convinced that they need us a whole lot more than we need them and their strategy is based on our desire to be reasonable and polite in a very British sort of way. I believe that they think being British means that we will try to avoid conflict at any cost.
In order to try and browbeat us they have recruited a fifth column of Remoaners, see above, who are seeking to undermine our resolve. Let's remember that we are one of the greatest trading nations in the world, the world's fifth largest economy, that we have a strong and robust economy, and can survive outside of the EU just as well, if not better than we did inside. Let's walk away and then see who feels the cold hand of fear? They'd be back to the negotiating table pretty Tut Suite methinks.
