To say that anyone that voted leave voted for a hard exit is simply wrong. That’s the Tory spin machine at work, rather than reality. I voted out, and would do so again, but I most certainly did not vote for “No deal is better than a bad deal”, nor did I vote for prolonged uncertainty for EU citizens living in the UK and vice versa.
That’s what at the heart of where we find ourselves currently. Cameron asked the wrong question. He also made the mistake of thinking he knew the answer, before he asked the question.
I said at the time, before the vote, what was needed was a list of twenty or thirty grievances the public at large had with our membership of Europe, not are we in or are we out, that could have been held in reserve. All the “campaigning ” that ensued would then have been to educate the public on the details of each, and any ramifications that they had, eg can’t do this without that happening. We all then voted on five things that were important to us. The teams could then have gone to Europe and negotiated on the top fifteen or twenty. They would then have refined and improved what the public saw as the problems we had with Europe, with Europe in full knowledge that the “whole” of Britain, or at least the 60% that voted, were behind the team.
That way we could have come out with improved conditions without cutting our own throats in one way or another.
All the leaders ( of all persuasions ) that had gone to Europe to negotiate before had come back bigging themselves up on how well they had done, but Maggie was the last one to get anything worthwhile from Europe, because at that time we were a stronger unit negotiating from a stronger position ( relatively speaking ).
Edit – crossed posts with Ed, but I think what he’s saying and what I’m saying are coming from the same place.
PS – Ed, please don’t adopt Richard’s prosaic adaptations of names and titles – I know you love the English language!!??
