The Last Days of Mrs May?

I was impressed that TM came out fighting! God knows she's tried and tried despite being stabbed an the back and the front by her own party.
Yes. Demand respect. Give the EU a fright. It's even making me feel like brexiter and I voted remain.

Seems like a monumental act of self harm. Cutting off the nose to spite the face.

lemongrove, trading under WTO rules will mean loses for both Britain and the European Union.

However, with the EU those loses will be spread across all twenty-seven remaining EU nations. With Britain, those loses will have to be contained within just our population.

She is being critcise for the actions and non action of others.

The country voted leave. She is respecting this.

Northern Ireland is part of this country , she is respecting this.

The 27 countries, particularly those that we do a lot of trade with will be worried even if the EU fat cats in Brussels are not.
If we go and trade under WTO then we pay more tariffs but so do they.

I believe the EU is not deliberately making things difficult for Britain to leave as they do not require anything from the UK in these negotiations

It is for Britain to come up with a leave agreement that respects the treaty rules of the European Union and does not require the other twenty-seven nations to change those rules to facilitate our leaving.

It is the above that the British negotiators have failed to do as this mess is one of our own creation, and only our politicians can sort it out.

I think T May gave quite a good speech, for somebody who doesn't take easily to public speaking.On the disrepect side, there has been that from EU leaders since before the referendum, look how they treated Cameron! Some ( not all) seem like chauvinistic throwbacks who after a bottle of claret either leer or are disrepectful to women ( any women.) All they ever wanted from the UK was hard cash, there was never any respect there.
There may be a deal to be done but if we have to walk away then I hope we will do so.

Rubbish same old rectoric from bitter remainers. There will not be another EU refendum or general election you are clingy to straws.

It is painful to watch and while I think TM has not proved equal to the job, nevertheless I feel sorry for her.
A Remainer in charge of negotiating terms for Brexit? She had an impossible task and was never going to be able to put her heart into it which brings us back to the futility of the Referenfum. Devised to placate the extreme Right wing, it was never credible that the government would be able to put its money where its mouth was. Corbyn as Leader of the Opposition has contributed little in the way of offered alternatives and the whole palaver has been pathetic from the outset .
Frankly there does not seem to be a way out of this morass.
Unlike Cameron, May is not a quitter but oh how she needs to be put out of her misery.
I am also losing sympathy with Brussels, they seem determined to make this as hard and humiliating as possible, acting both arrogantly and spitefully. Beginning to wonder whether like Groucho Marx we actually want to belong to any club that would have us a a member.

27 countries all value the advantages of EU membership and yet the UK,- the one country which has the best possible deal at present- not in the euro or schengen and benefiting from a generous rebate, allows a fraudulent referendum, won by lies, to be a reason for leaving?

Like a petulant spoilt child the UK demands even more special treatment, and then, when politely told this club has rules, protests about lack of respect!

well said, crystal. I must confess I don't understand much of what is going on but it terrifies me.

They’re only treating her with contempt because of the dithering u turns and the impossible task she has of pleasing anyone. The lies told by Brexiteers that we would have countries falling over themselves to trade with us and the EU would give us favourable terms plus we would keep all the money for the NHS are obviously never going to materialise in our lifetimes.

Well I think she finally showed some balls about time Mrs May. The EU are treating us with contempt who in their right mind would want to stay now.

Good grief, Corbyn has released a written statement ! , what leader of the official opposition wouldn’t put themselves out there , on every news channels and radio?

Well if the EU doesn’t have any respect for her, & are pushing their luck with negotiations it’s because what they see & hear is that her own country is kicking her in the teeth. Talk about being passed a poisoned chalice. I think woman are worse than men when it comes to backstabbing.
We are aiding & abetting all this negativity . You can only work with the tools at hand, it was never going to be as easy & straight forward as some kidded themselves it would be, cut the woman some slack whilst you sit on the sidelines criticising. Everything is amazingly simple for those that will never be accountable.

I don't think it's undemocratic at all. Did Leavers vote for no deal catastrophe? Because that it what it will be.

There's so many different versions of Leave that it's impossible to be sure what they really wanted. If it's going to be 'no deal' they should be given a chance to say if that's what they really wanted.

No it wouldn't - why is it undemocratic to have a vote on what is on the table (or not) after October??!!!

As someone here in the office has just said, the leavers are now stating more so than ever, "just let us walk away". However, surely that would still leave the problem of Ireland, as there would have to be a hard border between the North and the South.

Whether that border was put in place by the EU, Britain or both, it would still divide the island an in all probability restart the war in the North.

Therefore would even a " no deal" resolve anything.

This is all down to the DUP holding her to ransom

Blimey....has she lost it completely ???

What a pathetic performance!

She has failed to square the circle, failed to get cake and eat it, failed to do what she knows to be in the best interests of the country - declare that the referendum was ill-concieved and fraudlent and we should remain in the EU.

She is prepared to drive the UK off the cliffedge, blighting the future of our children and grandchildren.

A total failure.

I suppose what we have to accept is that we stupidly, over the years signed up for a club that in fact nobody can leave

Having followed the 'debate' on Brexit closely over the last two years, and having seen both sides of the argument, it seems to me that the 'leaving the club' analogy, which is commonly used to illustrate the process, is the most misleading and useless analogy anyone could have come up with. I think that a much more accurate analogy would be that of separating siamese twins.

Siamese twins can be successfully separated if each twin has the necessary organs for sustaining life but no-one in their right minds would consider separating them by just cutting through the join. It requires a lengthy, painstaking and intricate operation to give both of them the best chance of independent survival. Even so, the weaker of the two doesn't always make it. In this case we are the weaker twin.

The essence of the EU is that it is a regulatory body. We are intricately bound to it by rules (which we have contributed to developing) which govern not only trade of goods and services within the EU but often (as with aviation) with the rest of the world through agreements negotiated by the EU. Experts in EU and International Law tried right from the start to warn that disentangling this would be a lengthy and difficult process. But their warnings were airily dismissed as Project Fear or pro EU bias. But they didn't say it couldn't be done, just that it would be difficult and complex.

Unfortunately May has never taken any heed to what the experts were saying. There's never been a 'plan', just a series of aspirations which have completely disregarded the practicalities. I can never make up mind as to whether she is intelligent but supremely self deluding, or just plain ignorant.

The EU have said from day one that we can't cherry pick the bits we like from membership and discard the rest. They have said that they cannot impair the integrity of the Single Market. The Single Market is hailed as one of Thatcher's greatest achievements. I sometimes wonder if our refusal to accept the indivisibility of the 'four pillars' stems from a belief that 'we invented it so we can do what we like with it'...

The EU will be happy to do a trade deal with us once withdrawal is sorted but no trade deal with the EU is going to be as advantageous as the terms under which we trade a members. Nor will they favour us in any way just because we 'used to be a member state'. It would probably violate WTO rules for a start...

Demonising the EU is ridiculous. It is the sum of its members so in effect one is saying that 27 European states are our enemies (but we'd like them to ignore our insults to have a better than anyone else's trade deal with them.) How childish....

Lol ?
She probably will say I'm sticking with Chequers, my way or no way, she's so pigheaded.

I think she should say ‘I’m resigning, after doing all I can, let’s have a GE and let Corbyn sort it all out’ he would probably keel over with shock horror!

She's making a statement live at 1.45 hopefully she has got the message and resigns.