The wicked European Union is drawing up plans to punish us after we leave by continuing to exist after we leave. At least, that’s the gist of today’s Ukip Pravda, or the Express as I believe it is more commonly known. “EU still trying to rule Britain” is their splash.
The less sensationalist take is that after the Article 50 timetable is finished, the new EU-UK relationship will not be complete, and it is in the interests of everyone – British business, the EU27, the British government, British citizens, you name it – that rather than falling into some kind of legal no man’s land, which is why the British government has asked for – not been forced into, asked for – a period of transition after Brexit.
As well as meaning that during that period, the United Kingdom will be subject to whatever new rules the EU27 decides it wants to follow without having any say, there will have to be some form of enforcement mechanism to make sure that the agreement is honoured on both sides. Or: “We will use sanctions to punish you, says Brussels” as the Times splash puts it.
It all comes back to Theresa May’s biggest error, which is that instead of using the period when her popularity was such that almost everyone in her party thought that to oppose her was to go against someone who was set to be in possession of a 100-seat majority and a thousand-year-mandate to set out what Brexit actually meant and what the trade-offs it entailed involved (when she’d have had the scapegoat of David Cameron’s failure to plan for an Out vote, too); she opted to use the Leave vote as a stick to beat Labour.
The result is today’s headlines, turmoil in the Conservative Party and very possibly a disastrous Brexit for the United Kingdom.
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