What is all this 'not showing our hand' crap?

[3amEternal]

It's not a poker game or a magic trick, if the EU don't agree with what we want they'll just say no. Why the drama and suspense? I keep having visions of the Brexit Great Reveal, David Davies pulling BoJo wearing rabbit ears out of a black hat while Liam Fox sashays in a sequin dress and wig. May, Merkel and Juncker watching horrified from the front row. Or is that just me?

You have to preface it with "It's like a game of poker..." and never say anything after "...hand."

It's, like, a killer argument .

I've just noticed that MN have called this section 'EU referendum 2016'

Are they expecting another EU referendum then?

There is also the implication that we are bluffing, which is not reassuring at all. If our hand was so good, surely we would show it.

Stripey are you Talking Britain Down? We must have an amazing hand, a totally top-secret hand that nobody in Parliament is allowed to know because Democracy.

What they're planning to do is, at the last moment, whip off the holoprojection cloaking device covering what appears to be a nondescript patch of the North Sea... to reveal a sprawling sunlit island containing a thriving R&D sector churning out streams of fully-developed world-beating innovations, a booming manufacturing sector churning out every product we could ever require (from the foremost technological marvels, to handmade artisanal slippers), and overabundance of mineral and natural resources to supply all our material and energy needs for the above, and a burgeoning agricultural sector ensuring a self-sufficiency of wholesome and delicious nourishment for the entire population.

Then they can go "Aha! See, you do need us more than we need you! Take that, Europeans!"

I'd like to believe that TheElementsSong

My fear is that our strategy is to behave as if we have lost our minds and to threaten that, in our fundamentalist Brexit madness, we will destroy both the EU and ourselves, unless we get what we want.

It's not a very dignified strategy. It is also unlikely to lead to anything other than sour relationships internationally for a long time.

The French ( and so by implication the rest of the EU) already know what we've offered Nissan and what we are aiming for.

So its bollocks to keep the people/parliament in the dark.

The teenage conspiracist in me wonders if it is actually to stop the KIP vote from going crazy when we stay in the single market, paying fees etc and get brexit lite.

Crap - it's just that.

This isn't a business negotiation where you can plead commercial confidentiality, though some of the most successful business negotiation processes actually identify the best possible mutual benefit by opening their books to each other. In any case when I negotiated contracts on behalf of my company that individually accounted for in the region of 10%of revenue, of course I had to agree my strategy beforehand with the board, report back at each stage and was held accountable for achieving our targets.

However this is a constitutional, political, legal as well as economic separation, an incredibly complex change management project to implement new laws, policies and processes that will take years and should be subject to the full measure of checks and balances that protect our country from the incompetence of individual minister and leaders (and oh boy have we got a full house of those)