Originally Posted by
jackal2
I know you're talking to Joe, but I'll throw in my opinion for the hell of it.
Theresa May has to take the blame for calling a General Election which should have consolidated her position but in fact weakened it because she campaigned so badly. And the Conservative Party as a whole must take huge blame for re-selecting candidates for that General Election such as Anna Soubry, who was always going to renege on the manifesto commitment to Brexit as soon as she was re-elected. There was not a chance in hell that the likes of Soubry were ever going "strengthen the Prime Minister's position in the negotiations", or reflect the democratic choice of a Leave voting area like Broxtowe.
As a consequence of her Government containing too many imposters pretending to be Conservatives, Theresa May (possibly an imposter herself - to a degree) and her Brexit ministers were negotiating from a position of weakness from the outset, reducing their chances of getting a good deal. However, she should still have stuck to her mantra that "no deal is better than a bad deal" and walked away from the table as soon as it was evident that the EU was offering nowhere near enough to constitute a good deal for the UK. It would have taken us to the same No Deal conclusion we could reach next week, but much quicker. The country wouldn't have wasted large amounts of money and the best part of two years.
No Deal is the only scenario where I can see the Conservative Party retaining the support of thousands of lifelong, grassroots Tory voters. If May's Brexit deal passes at the last minute and we get a three month extension, most Brexiteers will still be hugely dissatisfied with the outcome and the concessions made to achieve it. And if the Conservative/DUP Government somehow allows Article 50 to be revoked, the Conservative party could in effect be destroyed.
Labour has its own problems of course, so the last thing they should be doing is crowing about any Conservative demise. Both parties are trying to cleanse their Parliamentary representation of "centrist" Blairites and Cameroons who are essentially different cheeks of the same a*se, offering the public any choice they want... so long as it's none. The Labour Party is probably ahead of the Conservatives in terms of trying to reclaim its soul, with Socialists now firmly back in control of the party outside Parliament and likely to seize back control of the Parliamentary party after the next election. The Conservatives still have a lot of work to do to get rid of their infestation and rediscover the Thatcherite spirit.