The United Kingdom is in an inextricable mess over Brexit with no perspective of finding a solution. One of the most incomprehensible things for me is the total capacity of any of the key players to actually negotiate. Mrs May got herself in this position because she set out a series of red lines (things that were non negotiable) before going into the negotiation with the EU. In a similar manner Mr Corbyn is now refusing to negotiate with Mrs May unless she first rules out a no deal Brexit under any circumstances. One of the most basic rules of negotiation is that the more issues you include the best chance you have of actually concluding a deal. The way a negotiation works best is when you have a lot of different things on the table and you can then "lose" on some issues and "win" on others to get to a deal where everyone is a winner. The less elements you have, the harder it becomes to do trade offs. Contrary to what some people may think, putting conditions before a negotiations does not strengthen your hand, quite the opposite as has been demonstrated by the British Government over the last 2 years.
I'm friendly with and occasionally work with a classmate who is a study in contrasts. He's a 29 year old, Durham University educated, former pwc auditor who's lived in multiple countries. His girlfriend is Spanish-Colombian. He's also a Brexiteer.
ReplyDeleteToday we teemed up for a class project on a middle eastern development challenge. He mentioned he had spent two weeks in Kurdistan on an oil audit, just miles away from ISIS. I told him that's interesting, but we won't be simulating our presentation to Erbil officials, but Baghdad ones.
This led us to our little inside joke about "taking back control" (Brexit reference). I asked him whether he preferred a crash out scenario over a second referendum and which scenario he thought was more likely to occur. His response? "Both".