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The UK's weakness isn't rooted in a belief that May's majority in parliament is too narrow. It's pretty clear that, given the referendum, even Labour would have a hard time voting against Brexit. The weakness is that Brexit is simply 5x worse for the UK than it is for the EU, at least economically. The UK does around 50% of its foreign trade with the EU, while for the EU, which is much larger, this represents only around 10% of trade. The result of failed negotiations is, for the UK, widespread economic depression. For EU countries, it's a slight economic road bump. It's the same mechanism that makes it a much bigger deal for you to get hired by Google than it does for Google. There's no amount of nationalism, tough talk, bluffing, or posturing Britain can do to change the fact that, at the end of the day, Europe can walk away from these negotiations at any time. Indeed, given the wish to clearly show, once and for all, the benefits of EU membership, failure may already be close to break-even. And even bureaucratic monsters have feelings–the Daily Mail may end up creating true European unity as a parting gift. All this was obviously known before the referendum, which is why it's baffling to still not even see it being addressed in conservative circles, which instead continue to be rewarded for lying and riling up a nationalistic furore. > The thing is we have a bigger problem Indeed |