To wish the EU would stop being so arsey with us!

[GreatAuntPrudish]

Juncker is an utter prick - leaking details of the dinner at No.10.
Then there's Barnier, Hollande and other EU officials warning us how ugly it's going to get.

Poland and France wanting to extract every last billion out of us!

They're playing into May's hands - giving her the opportunity to look like the Boudicca of the 21st century when she is actually an utterly useless PM.

I wish they'd show some consideration for the 48%

I'm a Remainer - still want to stay in EU - but it's starting to piss me off so there's little chance the leavers who were starting to wobble will want to stay now.

The Daily Mail are relishing it

I'd be very surprised, after Greece's miserable experience, to see the UK treated any better. I sort of fell out of love with the EU after that debacle, although I did still vote to remain.

Very sad. Both sides have so much to lose and so little to gain from whatever eventuates.

I don't think the EU are being particularly arsey.

Look at it from the point of view of the EU and its individual members. Theresa May KNOWS leaving the EU will leave the UK economy worse off. She may be incompetent but she is not stupid. So she goes into these negotiations making unreasonable demands. Why? To appear strong to the electorate at home or because she actually thinks the EU will accommodate her. You might have to read the news of other EU members to see how short sighted this approach is. There are no bitter feelings more bemusement why the UK expects to leave with a huge leaving gift.
The EU represents its member states and there is simply not much public support in letting Britain off lightly.

Why would they care about us? Our country chose to leave, they have to protect the interests of those remaining and the EU itself and try to put off others from following us out.

The UK started all this. Unfortunately.

They are not being arsey.
We've effectively said to them 'your baby is ugly'
Then we've said, you know those pensions for our countrymen that worked in the EU on our behalf, well, you can pay them.
Then we've said those bodies that we negotiated to be in our country, and those ideas that we wanted and we agreed to contribute financially to (you know the contract we have) well were just going to ignore it and tear it up. (imagine a company saying we're not going to pay redundancy pay because we don't feel like it).
May has been aggressive and they are matching that. Davies is clueless.
What's not to understand?

Of course they're going to make it difficult for us ! The last thing they want is Brexit to be a success, because if it is other countries will want to leave.
They don't give a fuck about us.

On Thursday 27th April 2017, over ten months since the vote for Brexit, and almost a month since Theresa May set the clock ticking on the Brexit negotiations by triggering Article 50, the AFP news agency reported the "breaking news" that Theresa May has accused the other 27 EU countries of lining up to oppose Britain over Brexit!

It beggars belief that Theresa May came out with such a ridiculous statement, and that anyone consdered it newsworthy for any reason other than the fact that an actual British Prime Minster could have made such an extraordinarily slow-witted observation.

Of course the other 27 EU nations are opposing Britain over Brexit. It was obvious that Brexit was going to cause a massive diplomatic nightmare way before the referendum even took place.
Who on earth could have imagined that the EU would bend over backwards to give Britain what it wants, even if we were departing their club on amicable terms (which we're certainly not under Theresa May's lamentable leadership)?

For goodness sake. Why wouldn't they defend their own economic interests and the integrity of their union?

What on earth would possess them to offer better terms to a departing member than the terms available to existing (fee-paying) members of their club?
The thing that makes this statement from Theresa May all the more ridiculous is that if anyone is most responsible for the hard line the EU diplomats and member states are taking, it's clearly Theresa May herself.

Theresa May is hardening attitudes against us with her displays of bellicose foot stamping belligerence and her disdain for the liberal values that have bound Europe together ever since the two great British statesmen Winston Churchill (Tory) and Clement Attlee (Labour) collaborated to ensure nothing as horrific as the Holocaust could ever happen again by enshrining liberal British values across the whole continent of Europe through the European Convention on Human Rights.

After an excruciating six months of "Brexit means Brexit" dithering Theresa May finally announced her so-called "negotiating strategy" in her infamous January 2017 clown costume speech unveiling the centrepiece of her strategy to be a ridiculous threat that boiled down to "give us what we want or we'll trigger an economic meltdown by stropping away from the negotiating table with nothing".

It hardly takes a genius to recognise that threatening to blow up an economic bomb over Europe is not the way to establish good diplomatic relations with the EU 27.

Aside from making this belligerent threat the centrepiece of her "negotiating strategy" Theresa May has also severely pissed off our 27 former European allies by showing utter disdain for human rights. She's threatening to attack Churchill's finest legacy by scrapping the human rights of all UK citizens and residents, and her government also voted down an opposition party amendment to her Article 50 Act that would have obliged the government to at least begin looking into the process of protecting the rights of EU citizens who are resident in the UK.

Theresa May's contempt for human rights has horrified politicians across the European political spectrum from the centre-right EPP group all the way across to the progressive left and the greens. Her insistence on treating the lives of 3 million EU citizens in the UK as bargaining chips in the reckless game of brinkmanship she's playing is probably even less popular on the continent.

It's quite extraordinary that the British public, egged on by the jingoistic shouting of the right-wing propaganda rags actually allow themselves to believe that Theresa May's ludicrous threats against the economy of the people we have to negotiate some kind of deal with, and her extreme-right disdain for liberal values are examples of the "strong and stable leadership" that she's always wittering on about like a broken robot.

If the British people vote for a strutting combative charlatan like Theresa May, when they can see full well that she's too cowardly even to face Jeremy Corbyn or the other party leaders in a live debate, they'll be sleepwalking into chaos.

On June 23rd 2016 absolutely nobody voted for Theresa May to adopt a belligerent and self-defeatingly combative "make it up as I goes along" approach to Brexit, but if the British public hand her a thumping parliamentary majority on June 8th, then we'd be giving her a mandate to deliver a total bloody disaster.

Don't say you weren't warned.

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I have to add to the chorus of "wtf did you expect"?

Have to also say, though- the EU are not throwing the 48% under the bus. None of this is their fault. The people who are fucking us over are (in order) our government, our media, the 52% who voted to leave, and those Remainers who are now rolling over and accepting it as a done deal. If you know that Brexit is suicide, get up and fight it.

I don't think the EU want our head on a spike. They want to know what will happen with:

• soft borders (NI, Gibraltar)
• with rights of EU citizens within the UK - not just for now but for life and for the life of their children
• who will pay for things that the UK agreed to as a member of the EU. You can't sign up for initiatives that have a huge bill, then say you're leaving the club and no longer responsible for those commitments.

The EU have said that they would like an opt in for those 48% who wish to retain EU citizenship.

Meanwhile we've muttered about war in Spain, interference in our elections and generally treated neighbours who are our friends and allies like crap.

I wouldn't worry about what the EU think. We won't be part of them much longer.

What did you expect? This shit storm has the potential to destroy the EU and was created entirely by fucking Tories putting their internal party conflicts before national and international peace and stability.

Maybe they would rather be getting on with other things like dealing with the millions of refugees that other EU countries are dealing with (and that our government refused to help with).

We had a great deal with the EU. We were outside the euro, did not have to bail out Greece, outside the Shengen area so not open borders. And yet all we did was whinge. I'm not surprised they've not bent over backwards so we can crap on them from a great height.

Leave voters and the Tories have made our bed. Now all the rest of us have to lie in it.

I can't think of a single thing that the EU has actually done that could fairly be called arsey (unless seen through the prism of daily mail headlines/political spin).

They have done the only thing they could to protect remainers (offer opt-in citizenship and full rreciprocal rights for EU citizens in the UK and UK citizens in the EU).

They have set out their position in clear and transparent terms from the start.

This is the fault of UK politicians; those who control the press and every single person who voted leave. I hope that at least the first two of these groups will one day be obliged to accept responsibility.

With all due respect OP it is not the EU but rather the Teresa May and her hard Brexitears, that is not showing consideration to the 48%. Really what do people expect? It is a bit much to criticise the EU for protecting its members when the anti EU British politicians and press have declared it open season on the EU institutions and citizens! It is not the EU that coined the term 'remoaner'.

taking all the energy and focus away from the stuff they should be working on

Yes like their huge new shiny building for instance?

They've got no obligation to the UK now. They don't owe you a good deal.

OP you're falling for the right wing programming, the purpose of which is to distract you from their own shafting of all public services, social security and living standards in this country.

They're playing a very dangerous game. The EU is losing popularity in continental Europe. The EU is losing it's image as a cooperative, mutual, voluntary 'peace project' union and gaining an image of a coercive controlling imperialist overlord power which punishes those who step out of line. It's happened in Greece and it may happen here.

Her insistence on treating the lives of 3 million EU citizens in the UK as bargaining chips in the reckless game of brinkmanship she's playing is probably even less popular on the continent

She claims she didn't. It was EU leaders who refused to discuss it before the Article 50 notice was delivered. They said no negotiation without notification. I don't actually know the truth of the situation. However, it really can't be that difficult to resolve (I know there's an issue about people being allowed to bring elderly relatives over to the UK but that's the only thing at issue as far as I can tell).

The Ireland border thing is a red herring as far as I can tell. There are already soft borders with non-EU states (the Vatican is an obvious one). It cannot beyond the wit of the two sides to come up with a solution.

Gibraltar is another red herring. Spain does not have a veto. That is a misreading of the negotiation guidelines.

I wonder whether anyone in authority in the EU has actually said anything about the money the UK needs to pay to leave. I suspect that the large bill would include access to EU projects and the single market in the future. But a termination payment would seem to need to include:

Any ongoing obligations we've already promised to meet
Transitional payments for any transition period (the European parliament said no more than 3 years but it could well be longer because the EU 27 don't want a cliff edge either and some things are going to take longer to resolve than the less than 2 years we have now)
Pension contributions

Minus our share of EU assets.

I don't know how much that will be but I suspect it can actually be calculated fairly easily by intelligent people with the necessary knowledge.

I am fed up with all the posturing on both sides.

Bloody Cameron. He goes off and has a nice life, having wrecked things for the rest of us.

OP direct your ire at May and her embarrassingly combative and parochial 'the EU are out to get us and out to manipulate our general election'. Pathetic posturing straight from the Donald Trump book of tricks. It's party above all else for that woman. As long as the Tories get back in everything else can go to shit.

I hate the EU too. Nasty bitter little shits, pissed off that they're losing our £350 million a week! This is why they're being awkward and nasty, because they're angry and pissed off and bitter. They are like a rejected ex LOL!

The sooner we are out, the better. If LePen gets to be in charge of France, they'll be out next; then that will be the end of the EU.

We were screwed the minute the referendum was called. We had all sorts of special conditions and a firm Remain would have weakened any retention of those and a Leave obviously has caused a shit storm.

'This is why they're being awkward and nasty, because they're angry and pissed off and bitter. They are like a rejected ex LOL!'

You sound pretty bitter yourself.

Er, lol.

Of course the EU are going to play hardball. They want the best deal for them, and they want to discourage any other country from leaving.

The UK is fucked. Cheers.

They've got some way to go until they are being as arsey as Farage was. I still cringe at the way he stood up and crowed at the European Parliament. And weirdly after being insulted they aren't trying to be our friends at the expense of themselves

Haven't you heard Just, Farage is a noble knight, the saviour or the United Kingdom. Oh if only we were worthy enough to lick his hairy little xenophobic balls.