Amber Rudd had been admirably disciplined on Brexit. She was a passionate Remainer, who performed herself with distinction in the referendum campaign – but then, supported the Prime Minister. Things have been fraught since, and the new dividing line is whether Cabinet members can support the Prime Minister’s official position that ‘no deal is better than a bad deal.’ In committee today, Rudd wobbled – saying that no-deal is ‘unthinkable’.
It wasn’t quite as bad as it sounded. Plenty of Brexiteers argued the same during the referendum campaign: of course we’ll get a deal with the EU, it’s in their interests as much as ours, it ought to be the easiest thing in the world to agree given that we start from a position of complete harmony. To think that we’d swap that for a system of barriers and tariffs? For no reason other than political posturing? You can see how the word “unthinkable” could be thrown in at the end of this argument.
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