Originally Posted by
Someone else
Originally Posted by
Me
We did hold the cards but remainer May chucked away our aces.
Which Aces were those?
Good question. Others are laughing without thinking but you've asked the good question.
Ace of Hearts: This was our choice.
May has acted afraid and recalcitrant, like she's worried but 'doing her duty' in doing what the voters said, instead of doing what she wanted. This makes it very easy for the EU to threaten negative consequences and get her to back down as a result. For someone who campaigned for this to happen the idea of threatening consequences would have been dismissed as "we know that, we chose it".
Ace of Diamonds: Money, money, money
Unlike Greece which desperately needed money from the ECB to keep their banks open and pay the bills, the EU wants our money.
Ace of Spades: First mover.
The vote caught the EU off guard, the genuinely weren't expecting we'd actually do it, and following that they waited for us to propose our solutions. We didn't do so. We waited, stalled and May chose to 'keep her cards close to her chest' until belatedly the Commission got fed up and came up with their own proposals which then have become the outcome. Had May come up with a fleshed our proposal like Chequers when she invoked Article 50 that would have set the groundwork to build on, instead of chucking away that opportunity and waiting for the Commission to do her work for her.
Ace of Clubs: Parliament.
[Another user there] suggested that a 'real Brexiteer' being able to command support in Parliament better was a 'flying unicorn' but of course that would have happened. Parliament was top ace for May. The Tories had an overall majority in Parliament and an opposition led by Jeremy Corbyn who was no confidenced by almost all his own MPs but clung on. She chucked away an overall majority, a 20+ point lead in the polls, a divided opposition and an opposition leader who wasn't taken seriously by calling an election then failing to turn up to the debates or win a majority.