Actually, the one person I sympathise with the most is Theresa May, who herself voted to Remain, IIRC, yet was put in a position to handle the Brexit storm that Cameron brought upon them.
As far as pursuing a harder Brexit than the Norway/Switzerland model, that’s because it was very clear she would never get her own party’s support for it, that would be dead in the water.
Given the constraints put upon her, I think her Brexit deal really was the best compromise on all fronts that was ever going to be accepted by the EU.
The “have our cake and eat it, too” option that Boris Johnson talked about but never specified, what was that exactly? Free movement of Britons into Europe but not vice versa, free movement of goods from Europe but only as selectively deemed by the UK, and Ireland would agree to follow suit on whatever the UK specified?
The more I look at what Johnson et al. “really meant” it’s clear they didn’t think about NI at all, so would they take a trade of leaving NI to the EU domain and to hell with the DUP in exchange for getting everything else in the May Brexit deal - maybe even some more sweeteners from the EU? Because that’s really what the May deal is, right, let’s all stop pretending a “backstop” in NI would ever end until N years down the road when a referendum is called that has them joining the Republic anyway?
But then, I read that even NI and the Republic wouldn’t necessarily want that to happen, since the NI economy actually benefits enormously from a subsidy from Westminster that would presumably end under such a scenario.
And of course, part of the Brexit sentiment is the desire to restore a sense of Empire, and actually shrinking as a result of Brexit goes against that, doesn’t it?
Man, is this whole thing verkakte.
