Theresa May’s Brexit financial hint – is this another version of Tory ‘divide-and-rule’?
Manfred Weber, the chairman of the European People’s party, arrives at Downing Street for talks with Theresa May [Image: Tolga Akmen/AFP/Getty Images].
Tiring of negotiating with Michel Barnier, they are instead working on representatives of the 27 other EU member states individually – presumably in the hope that they will settle for less money as single states than as a bloc.
The inevitable result, if they succeed or fail, is that the other EU governments will feel that the Tories in the UK tried to make fools of them. That makes the UK’s economic future after Brexit much less certain.
But that’s Tories for you – they live for their own short-term gain and couldn’t care less about the consequences for others.
Theresa May is close to offering a deal on money that would unlock the Brexit negotiations, according to the head of Europe’s centre-right MEPs, who said he had received “positive messages” during a meeting in Downing Street on Wednesday.
Manfred Weber, a German leader of the European People’s party (EPP) who is also a close ally of chancellor Angela Merkel, said he had witnessed a substantial shift in the British approach which might now allow EU leaders to move on to the next stage of negotiations.
The meeting was part of a deliberate strategy by Downing Street to open up direct channels to EU27 politicians rather than relying solely on chief negotiator Michel Barnier, whom they blame for what the government regards as a hardening in Brussels’ approach in recent months.
European leaders increasingly believe that the UK government now recognises that there is a need for an agreement in principle to settle up to €60bn or so, even if the fine detail and payment itself is deferred for later in talks.
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Personally, I would have told Barnier (whom I told doesn’t even have a mandate to negotiate) that, if he didn’t budge I would walk and see it through. I have to negotiate my wages and on more than on occasion, I have turned the job down because the money wasn’t good enough. It’s surprising how the money mysteriously appears. Barnier appears to be dictating, not negotiating, which is exactly what the E.U did to that idiot Call-Me-Dave. The E.U. didn’t want to budge, even with the threat of our leaving the Club; now that we have decided to leave, there has been no change in attitude. We keep hearing that it is in the interests of both parties yet it is the U.K that is expected to make all of the concessions; that is not negotiation. What would you do?
I would have taken a different set of arguments to the EU than David Cameron did. In fact, I think he took demands. That might be why he got the cold shoulder.
It’s possible he didn’t want the EU to give in to the things he wanted – remember, the Conservative Party was split over the EU and he wanted a referendum to settle the matter once and for all.
It hasn’t, and that shows up his foolishness all the more.
Tories are good at divide & rule. It’s the only thing they are good at.
To think we had the same things were we let the conservative government loose with our finances and look what they did in the eighties they destroyed our manufacturing base. Under Maggie Thatcher and it did not make the country prosper as it was supposed too. The fat cats that we here about again only seem to prosper. We in the Midlands and the North have been taken to the cleaners by the last Conservative Government. And now with Brexit we are going to loose out again because companies are thinking of removing the manufacturing and other support organisations out of this country, I don’t believe Teresa May the cronies in Downing Street are once again giving away our opportunities of ever being that nation we once called Great Britain.
I hope we a as a society will get the opportunity to have a final say and not be one man in a boat mentality. We need to have our final say in what is too happen because it is the people of the country that will suffer, not all the millioniare’s in the Conservative government it will be us the working man that will come off the worst.