Who has the upper hand here?
For a while it sounded like the EU was going to screw over the UK as much as they could. No mercy, no bargaining. Now they are relenting?
I’m confused.
Britain’s bargaining position under May was weak because we had a remainer Prime Minister leading a minority government who never believed in Brexit and treated it as a crisis to be managed instead of an opportunity to be seized, and didn’t have the support in Parliament to force through a no deal scenario even if she wanted to (which she didn’t).
Now we have a PM who actually believes in Brexit and has an 80 seat majority government with most of the irreconcilable remainers within the conservative party purged from Parliament, and therefore he has the support in Parliament neccessary to be able to walk walk away with no deal. The EU and its agents within the UK Government and Parliament have now been rendered all but powerless.
The EU could have achieved a British agreement to a quite a sell out deal under May but they were so overconfident from dealing with Theresa May and her minority government, remainer-ridden parliament that they over-reached themselves by making impossible demands and forced an election that changed the parliamentary arithmatic in favour of hard brexit headbangers like me, and the howlings of despair for remainers who thought that they could sabotage and undermine the government enough to cancel Brexit.
Neither have the upper hand. Economically the EU has, but boris doesn’t have any upcoming elections for years so can and should go for a no deal