We chose our crew

[Suff]

Now the EU has chosen the head of their Brexit negotiation team.

So it would appear that hardball is the name of the game. All we need to do now is live up to it and play the same game. the more it looks like the UK and the EU is going to split with a clean break, the more other countries will start looking to do their own trade deals with us direct.

It's going to be a bumpy few years but it's also going to be an exercise which kills a million trees and makes and breaks dozens of careers in academia.

[Workingman]

Oh, poor UK Brexit team, having to work with a hard-liner.

What the hell did all the leavers expect the EU to do, put up a cuddly toy for the negotiations, one who would deliver Brexitopia on a plate? Well, they got that one wrong, didn't they?

So now they are going to have to work hard to get the Brexit they promised! Tough luck. Get on with the job and stop bleating.

[Suff]

Yep but our Brexiters are fluffy little lambs compared to this guy....

Time to Man up and stick the boot in. Well at least May has a firm hand on the tiller. After all the Labour bleating about protecting the rights of EU citizens in the UK, May has been clear. "We want to protect those rights but you screw our people in the EU and we'll do the same to yours. BTW there are a LOT more EU citizens in the UK than there are UK citizens in the EU"...

It's a gonna be interesting however it goes.

The EU could have chosen someone like Davis to lead the negotiations. Instead the chose the equivalent of putting an EDL radical in charge of negotiations to split Scotland from the UK.

That's going to end in tears for someone and the truth is this. Apart from Germany the economies of the EU, individually (because they still run individually), are more fragile than the UK. If they want to really start playing hardball the pain is going to be felt in countries in the EU which can't stand the heat whilst other countries stand by and egg on the pain givers.

I'll enjoy that a LOT.

[Workingman]

I have little sym..., no, let me rephrase that, I have no sympathy, not one iota. Who would leavers have wanted the EU to pick: The Smurfs; Little Red Riding Hood; The Little Mermaid or Hansel and Gretel?

All we heard in the run up to the vote was from leavers was: "Vote Leave!" "Vote for a bright new world" "23rd of June, UK Independence Day" "Money to burn" " 24 hour sunshine". The leave camp was very definite about what Brexit would bring. They made promises to prove to us that their game was the one, the only game in town. Any dissension was shouted down in the most vile ways.

How quickly things change. We have not even got into Brexit and already the leavers' blame games and excuses for future non-delivery, and there will be non-delivery of some things, are being rolled out. Leavers were so damned sure that Brexit would be more damaging to the EU that it would roll over. But now that things have changed, for the worse, and it is not their fault, it is everybody else's fault. And because it looks like the EU will negotiate, and negotiate hard, it is not fair.

Stop bellyaching, roll your sleeves up, and get to work. I will wholeheartedly support you if that is what you do. What I will not do is buy in to all the whingeing and moaning.

[Suff]

Stop bellyaching, roll your sleeves up, and get to work. I will wholeheartedly support you if that is what you do. What I will not do is buy in to all the whingeing and moaning.

Personally, for me, I think this is another EU miscalculation and I think it's a good one.

Had they chosen a soft approach middle of the road person who is compelling and hard to refuse, the UK could have been talked into losing ever so much that the Brexit crowd promised.

With this negotiator there is going to be so much in your face and so much conflict that the UK won't be sweet talked into giving up much at all. In fact it will probably be the worst of both worlds for both sides.

For me that's great. Clean break and get on with it. Also, for me, it's great. It shows, yet again, the contempt that the EU institutions hold for the UK. Of course the institutions are not going to pay the price, are they! They think that a hard faced negotiator, after Davis was chosen as their adversary and Davis is a reasonable man, is the best way to get what they want.

I wonder just how many ways they will underestimate the UK. All over again. They thought that Brexit wouldn't happen if they held firm, threatened the people of the UK and lied their backsides off about how insignificant the UK would be out of the EU and that would do the job. Major oops time. Now they think that by pushing in an anti UK hard nosed Federalist as the negotiator they'll force the UK to give concession after concession until they get every single thing they want.

What the EU are most likely to get is a hard stop after two years with little or nothing agreed and the whole world open to the UK and the EU closed to the UK.

I leave everyone to consider how that will play out..

Because the biggest risk to the EU is that the UK ends the 2 year divorce with no settlement and the rest of the world is knocking on the door with better terms. Then the EU may find that the UK is quite happy with WTO rates with the EU and making deals with the rest of the world for what the UK wants to consume and sell.

There may be two losers in that picture but only one long term loser and it won't be the UK.

As I said before, I think it's great.

[Workingman]

I do not care what the EU does. We have no control over what they, the IMF, UK business or the tooth faery do. We only have control over what we do, and it is up to us to get on with it to our advantage.

It is time for the leavers to look forward, accentuate the positives, and then aim for them. Harking back to who did what and when, or dreaming of what they want to happen, no matter how fantastic, is pointless.

What we want, and what we get are two different things, and going with dreams is not real life. It's Britain's got talent stuff. If you dream you are a star you will become one. Tell that to the losers.

[Suff]

Ah but it takes two to tango. Unless the dance is one marching out the door never to return.

It's setting up nicely for a flounce.

[Workingman]

Oh come on. You leavers are not going to flounce this early are you? The dance has hardly begun.

There must be a wallflower willing to take your hand. She might not be a 'looker' but when times are hard.... !

[Suff]

You bad man you. You know the only wallflowers are allowed to be men nowadays...

No I said setting up nicely. I expect that if a flounce happens it will be 2 years hence.

[Workingman]