Statement by Barry Legg, Chairman of the Bruges Group

with luck the Conservative Brexiteers will now remove May and stick Her Brexit Policy in the shredder I have never rated May disastrous Home Secretary disastrous Premier there is no need for new elections no need for continuing the Stupid negotiations with Barnier We just leave the EU and ECHR right away

I wonder what the bearing of President Trump’s visit will have. It could well do something. No to the EU / UK rulebook.

the British public are dumb if May is allowed to get away with this

Theresa May will not get away with this. Parliament will not vote for the Chequers proposals and the EU will not accept it as it damages the integrity of its own structures. The vast majority of the Conservative membership are fiercely Eurosceptic and dislike this deal. The majority of constituencies that voted Tory in the last election actually voted Leave. She is playing a very risky game by pandering to the Remain minority in her party.

The EU has been the only honest party in the whole Brexit process. It said from the start that the UK had to choose between being fully in and fully out — either part of the nascent EU (soon to be, USE) federal country OR not part of that country. We voted OUT. A majority of Brits want the UK to return to being a self-governing independent country (”country’ used in the international primary sense of the word, which includes full control over borders, NOT the Scottish secondary sense of ‘common culture and history only’). But May somehow thought that she was brighter and smarter than everybody else and could somehow give the appearance of the UK being OUT while actually having it stay IN. The EU has never changed its position of requiring any territory wishing to join it to accept all four of its Freedoms, and won’t go for May’s sell-out scheme in which the UK leaves in name only in order to appease Big Business’s interests.

The Four Freedoms are present in all federal countries. Look at the USA where people, goods, services, capital are the same for a business in Ohio whether it trades with others in Ohio or trades with others in Pennsylvania or California or any other US state. And the same in Canada, and the same in Australia. The Four Freedoms define what is a federal country. And I don’t blame the EU and those running it for saying to the UK that it is either fully in or fully out. Make the choice. I do blame an imbecile like May for deceiving us and trying to cheat us out of the result of the 2016 Referendum. If the UK is to get a trading agreement with the EU, it has to be one in which there are no political trade-offs for the trading agreement — for instance, being half-in, half-out, such as in the EFTA. CETA would be acceptable, since total political separation, but no way that the EU would agree to that when the UK has to be taught a lesson for leaving. The May-Robbins’ Sell-out Scheme would have the UK not leave the EU fully politically in order to soothe Big Business. IT IS NOT WHAT WE VOTED FOR!!!!!

The Tories, by subterfuge, took us into the EU. The Tories, by the same tactics, will keep us in.