The narrative of the Brexit leave campaign was based on two fundamental pillars:
1) Germany runs the EU & German car makers run Germany.
2) The EU & Eurozone are sick & are going to collapse any day now.
That's all. Everything else was pure noise. There was a genuine belief, among Farage and his ilk, that Europe would be so desperate to keep Britain in the fold it would be begging to give Britain a trade deal.
Now, regarding these two things, it has become apparent that:
1) Germany don't own the EU, and even if they did they value EU stability far more than UK consumerism.
2) The EU is
actually strengthening, not weakening.
So the weakness that the Brexiteers were going to try to use to force a deal have been exposed as delusions, and Brexit a reckless gamble that didn't pay off. Even Farage, the most unhinged of all of the Brexiteers, is acknowledging the problem the UK has. He has gone from "you're in denial, give us a deal, we're leaving" to "you're like the Mafia! This is so unfair!"
Britain has the option of just walking away completely. But it doesn't want to. Even the people behind leave know this would be catastrophic....
[video=youtube;0xGt3QmRSZY]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xGt3QmRSZY[/video]
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/201...much-that-britain-is-part-of-europe--and-alw/
I cannot stress too much that Britain is part of Europe, and always will be. There will still be intense and intensifying European cooperation and partnership in a huge number of fields: the arts, the sciences, the universities, and on improving the environment. EU citizens living in this country will have their rights fully protected, and the same goes for British citizens living in the EU.
British people will still be able to go and work in the EU; to live; to travel; to study; to buy homes and to settle down. As the German equivalent of the CBI – the BDI – has very sensibly reminded us, there will continue to be free trade, and access to the single market. Britain is and always will be a great European power, offering top-table opinions and giving leadership on everything from foreign policy to defence to counter-terrorism and intelligence-sharing – all the things we need to do together to make our world safer.
Well here it is. Article 50 triggered. And the EU response was "agree to this, or be on your way", with quite a comprehensive list of things that give the UK a worse deal than the one it already has. That's that then, the EU obviously can do without the UK but the reverse is not the case. Going into negotiations in this position is like playing poker against someone who can see all of your cards.
So now that the intellectual arguments for Brexit have collapsed all that is left is for the Brexiteers to either complain to Europe and insult them for not giving the UK everything it wants, or to
deny completely what is happening. They're pretty much all rich guys anyway, they'll be ok. The little plebs they hoodwinked into voting for this? Well they don't really care to much about that.