Tuesday 25 April 2017

Exit from Brexit?

Five months since last post. It's not that I've stopped thinking, rather I could not keep pace with events! Trump's first 100 days, T.May's path to Article 50, the French elections first turn yesterday. A lot has been speculated on the reasons why T.May has called a snap general election. Her official reasons are all bogus, especially she does not need a stronger majority, and it's doubtful that she would get one anyway; the editorials on the Times and Guardian the next day also I think were off.

Closer, I think, is the observation that this is the last possible moment, before damage of the Brexit path starts being felt. She needs this right now before the economy loses its pound-devaluation-driven doping effect, and things start to hurt and fall apart. From that point, every day would bring bad news. This is the one and only moment that she can go for a vote from an apparently strong point in terms of economy figures.

 It will be very interesting to see how she will choose to pitch her exit strategy, since it's now very risky and difficult to be propositive with respect to Brexit terms and goals. Indeed, she seems to be rejecting TV debates which to me is quite telling: she knows that the more she says the more votes she loses. i.e. clarity hurts. I don't think it's clear what style of Brexit she aims for, but all signs are that she does want a strong personal mandate and perhaps her strategy for that is still catch-all-the-different-reasons-even-if-they-are-incompatible.

But maybe there is more. A hard Brexit was the direction taken so far, and in fact there was no obstacle that could have derailed this... except for an election. So perhaps in T.May's mind this is actually giving the UK people a last chance to rethink? Is this a strategy to offer an exit to Brexit? We know that 52.8% of people had things close to their hearts that they did not want (different things...) Now in an election the question is turned around: what do people want? This is a much better question, and the stuff of politics.

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