Theresa May can’t be trusted with Brexit negotiations

Theresa May seems to have got negotiation backwards. Usually, the idea is to bring the other side closer to your position. Instead, the prime minister and her Brexit ministers are pushing our European partners away.

When Jean-Claude Juncker entered Number 10 for dinner last week, Brussels was asking Britain to pay a €60bn “divorce bill” when we leave the European Union. You’d think the PM and her chief negotiator, David Davis, might have used the opportunity to bring that bill down. Instead, since Juncker left Downing Street “ten times more sceptical” than he was before, that bill has shot up to €100bn.

May herself admitted that Britain’s economic prosperity relies on getting these negotiations right. And yet, when she meets with EU officials, their position hardens and the terms of Brexit seem to get worse. Then she makes paranoid accusations about them trying to sabotage both the negotiations and the general election, knowing that her words will only ramp tensions up further and make a deal more difficult.

With a disastrous dinner followed by an angry, blustering speech outside No 10, May is showing that she understands the “art of the deal” about as well as Donald Trump does.

And that’s particularly scary, given that she has threatened to pull Britain out of the EU with no trade deal at all if an agreement isn’t reached, inflicting the hardest of hard Brexits on the country. That’s something she admits would jeopardise both our economic security and the futures of our children, and yet it’s something her own actions are making increasingly likely.

This government has chosen the most divisive and damaging form of Brexit, taking us out of the single market, which will mean fewer jobs and less money for public services. Failure to negotiate a new deal would compound that mistake even further, and be even more destructive to our economy.

May is putting Britain’s future at risk by repeatedly placing her party’s interests ahead of the country’s.

This election is a chance to stop May from imposing her disastrous version of hard Brexit. Right now, she thinks she can get away with it because of the weakness and incompetence of Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party. Britain badly needs a strong and effective opposition to the Conservative Brexit government, and the Liberal Democrats are the only ones who can provide it.

The Conservatives must be held to account for the choices they make—on Brexit as well as everything else. Britain really does need to get the best Brexit deal: one that retains as many of the benefits of EU membership as possible.

The deal should be put to a referendum, so that the people get to decide the future of our country, not the politicians. That referendum should offer two choices: accept the deal, or reject it and remain in the EU. Democracy didn’t end on 23rd June last year, and the British people must have their say over what happens next.