Against

I've now fully decided on the EU. The deal which I hate must be voted down. Although I hated the backstop, I hoped the EU would be ok with it and not try to control the UK using it.

Emmanuel Macron has let the cat out of the bag. He said that he would force the UK into the backstop and keep us there until we agreed to let French fisherman have all their rights to UK fishing grounds.

Spain raised similar views on the sovereignty of Gibraltar.

Although EU countries don't have a veto on the withdrawal deal, they do on the trade deal which follows. It is clear they will push us into the backstop and keep us there. That is simply not acceptable and hoping for the EU to be nice to us is not going to cut it.

What will happen? No-one knows. Here's what I hope...

1) The vote goes down
2) Theresa May resigns
3) Labour tries to force a general election and fails
4) The People's Vote lot try to get that through and fail
5) The Tories elect a full-on brexiteer
6) The new leader stops the £39Bn payment.
7) The new leader agrees with the EU for small facilitating deals, for small payments to the EU. These would be deals like keeping the planes flying etc. The payment will be < £1Bn per annum.
8) Parliament feels unable to vote down these small deals.
9) We leave on 29th March with as many as these small deals in place. Maybe with a small delay to the leave date.
10) We become independent.
11) Later, several years later, we approach the EU for a Free Trade Agreement on a par with Canada.

Let's hope...

Squiffy.

The Deal

I'm in conflict. The EU Withdrawal agreement is horrible. I hate it. Especially that the notorious backstop that can only be escaped with the agreement of the EU. It seems to be a serious loss of sovereignty. In fact there is so much to hate. I really don't want it and would rather have a no deal.

But.

I suspect that if it fails, there will be no Brexit and possibly the Government will fail. Is it worth this bad deal in the hope that the Prime Minister is ousted in favour of a Brexiteer once we get into the transition period? That new PM could get a better final deal?

The Government and PM have made such a hash of it. The only solace I know is that Corbyn and his lot would be worse. But it could have been so much better if we'd played hardball.

Oh how I wish it had played out so much better. I suspected Theresa May would make a bad PM and I've been proved right. If only we'd had a proper Brexiteer as PM. It looks like its probably too late to get the Brexit we want and deserve.

Such a shame!

I don't know what I want now.

Squiffy.