British Values and Brexit

[Denzil_DC]

1. I think it's fine. But then I'm a Remainer!

If there's in-house follow-up, I don't know whether you saw this OP of mine from a while back about "loser's consent": Brexit: How could today's vote result have been avoided?

Such a conciliatory approach wouldn't overcome all the worries you express about civil unrest from whatever quarter in the aftermath of (especially a no-deal) Brexit, but if we could backtrack two or three years and give May a brain and personality transplant, it might have done a lot to mitigate the impasse we're now in.

For instance, the SNP has consistently taken a very adult line in outreach to the EU, looking at how to soften Brexit in more acceptable ways etc. May's typically robotic response has been a combination of Cameron's arrogant public school bluster and her own brand of dogged determination to stick to her main red lines of "ending freedom of movement" (a line that Labour has shamefully aped) while trying to placate the DUP, who don't even represent the majority view in Norther Ireland if recent polling's to be believed. The reward for all this good faith may well be the stripping of the Scottish Parliament of vital powers, if not its dissolution if we kick up too awkward (in which case, I reckon "Independence ahoy!", assuming it's not strongly on the cards already).

At the moment, May's only moves in this respect other than bribing the DUP have been to attempt to buy off some MPs in England with a shake of the magic money tree that's dwarfed tenfold or more by the regional investment that would have happened under continued EU membership, amid plaintive pleas to others to move to wherever she's planted herself. The latter's positively US Republican as an approach!