It is reported that five Brexiteer Cabinet Members are working to get the draft agreement changed. This is plain silly. There is no chance whatsoever that any improvements can now be made because already quite a few in the EU feel it has made too many concessions already. Whether you love or loathe her or are pro or anti Brexit, May’s 500 page agreement, is the only plan is existence and it is too late to start again. The nationalists had their chance and blew it.
The draft Withdrawal deal has the great advantage that it protects the essential structures of economic life and the workings of key utilities and institutions offering certainty to business and ordinary families up and down the land. Of course it cannot be denied that it represents the greatest surrender of national sovereignty since the invasion of the Normans and it disenfranchises the British people from their right to vote for members of the European Parliament. It also takes away their European citizenship, something which many, like me, hold very dear. Very dear indeed.
But above all it is a failure of an entire political class of all parties, who embarked upon a course which had not been charted to a destination which was not there. It is upon them that the humiliation of reduced relevance and authority will fall, unable to influence, veto or change the rules by which much of the nation runs. It is a punishment richly deserved. It will be time to atone for all the issues left unresolved in a bulging domestic agenda. A UN Report drawing attention to shocking and unacceptable levels of poverty at the base of society, describing Universal Credit as unfair and its application misogynistic and cruel, is a good place to start.