by Richard A » Sun Feb 10, 2019 11:33 am
But another problem is that the hard Brexiteers simply do not get why what they think is just a breed of horse is in fact a unicorn. Something that Arneb and I have often talked about is that he finds it special just driving into Berlin from the surrounding countryside. I imagine Boris saying, "What's the big deal? I don't even know where the boundary between London and Buckinghamshire is - on many roads there aren't even signs. So your wife takes the kids from Potsdam to school in Zehlendorf - and?" He would even say, "You believe in all this European cooperation but you say that a German university opening a campus in Wroclaw and flying a large German flag from the main building wouldn't be a good idea. Why not - you believe in academic cooperation, don't you? And when I went to Berlin when I was Foreign Secretary, I saw loads of cars with Polish number plates. What's the problem?" Some of them do get it but don't care - on a level with, "Arneb, OK, I know you grew up with a wall around West Berlin. But you and your family had a pretty good life then, didn't you?"
For May, though, it is a unicorn exactly as Arneb describes. I think she does get what the big deal is about the Irish border - I don't think she believes, as Boris et al do, that Brussels is just being difficult for the sake of it. But she does cling to the belief that she can please her right wing and get a deal with Brussels. She can't. She can, with a customs union for the whole UK, have a deal that will get a Parliamentary majority and be acceptable to Brussels (and preserve the Good Friday agreement - or rather because it preserves it). But that would mean telling her right wing to go screw themselves and she doesn't have the bottle to do that.