May must pay up and clear out the Brexit rebels. All else is madness.

 ‘Theresa May says she will not tolerate Brexit backsliding 

from rebel remainer MPs.’ 

Photograph: Geert Vanden Wijngaert/AP

Hardcore Brexiteers are in the minority – the prime minister must stand up to them. Talk of ‘no deal’ is illiterate, playing politics with other people’s lives.

Why does Theresa May keep telling us what we already know? She says she will not “tolerate” Brexit backsliding from rebel remainer MPs. What we want to actually want to know she’s not tolerating is a much smaller group of flat-Earth rebels backsliding from a sensible Brexit. It is that madness she cannot fudge.

Brexit talks now resuming in Brussels are just days away from collapse. There is not the slightest doubt of the crunch issue. As anyone who knows Brussels will attest, its unelected cardinals do not care about single markets or migration or the euro, or even Europe. They care about their money, of which they are about to lose a fifth. On this Britain has no leverage, short of “no deal”.

Just pay the money. Sign it off at the cash desk. Some €50bn or whatever is not that much over time, and if leaving is such a good deal, it must be worth it. Once that is off the table, Brussels intelligence is that all is sweet reason. The other two cogs of the departure deal click into gear, on citizenship and Northern Ireland. The one is simple, the other is so impossible it will be left in an Irish mist, pending part two of the negotiations, which governs trade.

By Simon Jenkins.

Full story at The Guardian.