Remainers - What do you want? When do you want it?

[optionalrationale]

We had the referendum, we had the legal challenge, we had the Supreme Court ruling, Article 50 has been triggered. The United Kingdom will no longer be part of the European Union.

So my questions to Remainers are
What do you want? When do you want it?

Here's what I want..

I want the negotiations to go well. I want future relations with our neighbours to be cordial. I want a good deal for UK and the EU. I want us to walk away if their demands are unacceptable (and stem from vindictiveness and to deter other members from following our lead). I want the UK to be free to make good trade deals with any country it wants. I want the UK to lead in creating a new model of trade without excessive interference in each partner's social and political arena.

I dont think it's a street fighter we need: fights end up with losers.

We need someone pragmatic and knowledgeable but with some authority (and experience of going to bat against ultra brexiters). You could do worse than Andrew Tyrie.

According to the Independent, May intends to make ceasing to be a signatory to the Convention a main plank of her 2020 election campaign.

Which I find extremely sad, since we set it up for the very noble reasons of trying to avoid the appalling tyranny and major loss of life that we had suffered in Europe. May, being no student of history, wants to rip that up for her own small minded reasons.

Yes, I think May did get into Oxford on merit, but I think her 2:2 shows that she got there more by plodding than being an original thinker with that extra spark. She is now very much, IMO, an example of the Peter principle - a person who has risen to the level of their incompetence. Furthermore, Johnson knew the PM's job would be a poisoned chalice at this time, and Gove gave him a wonderful excuse to withdraw from the fray..

"but I think her 2:2 shows that she got there more by plodding than being an original thinker with that extra spark"

Yes, this is exactly right, I think. We see lots of these cases (in my Cambridge college). Students, often grammar school kids (mainly girls) who have been heavily tutored through school, who work very hard to get in, then do very badly once they are here as they are not creative or intellectual enough to have the curiosity to do well. They are hard workers, but that isn't enough. I think this is Theresa May in a nutshell.

In those days you only got a second at Oxford, they did not delineate between upper and lower so I think that may just be some fake news

LOL missmoon. I suspect we would all show considerably more creative spark in our intellectual endeavours at Uni if we had a gap year specialising in our degree subject with all the doors of industry and Westminster opened by the family name - your comment says more about Oxford than it does about the calibre of the students in question imho.

The ultra tory brexiteers are bare knuckle fighters.( Look at the way the election campaign was fought in 2015, some one was desperate for that win).
It takes real courage to face them down, and by 'street fighting nous' I meant someone with natural and strategic intelligence, cross class understanding and nerves of steel. Can't think of tory who's exactly like that for the moment. . At the moment she's their patsy. They will discard her brutally in good time unless some one has the toughness to face them down.

Wow, what a total underachiever TM is!

God, I can't believe I'm defending her.

I know those grammar school girls well too, missmoon I get what you're saying.

"Your comment says more about Oxford..."
I went to a comprehensive school myself, what is your point? You can't fake curiosity and creativity in the admissions interview, that's why we interview everyone even though we have their grades, work experience etc.!
However, I accept that things may have been different in Theresa May's time, when there was still a lot of prejudice at (some) Oxbridge colleges.

just to balance the discussion (although probably a forlorn hope):
When TM went to university there was none of this nonsense about 50% of young people going to University
In 1974 (I was in an earlier cohort of those attending university having gone in 1965) A levels were not handed out with A and A*s and to get a B was considered an excellent grade,
Only around the top 10% of young people went to University
To get into Oxford or Cambridge was very difficult (unless you went to public school ) and competition was fierce.
To get a 1st was exceptional (only 1 in my graduation year got a 1st) so to obtain a 2nd was not in some way indicative that TM was a plodder.
Finally, this was the time when girls were discouraged from going to University (figures will bear out how few went in the 1960s and early 1970s )
I think you are all doing her a dis-service to diminish what she has achieved whether you admire her politics or not.

According to that fount of knowledge, Wikipedia, Oxford introduced 2:1s and 2:2s in the late Seventies. So May might just have been one of the first recipients of a 2:2.

It was actually much easier for middling sluggers to get into Oxbridge in those days. In my northern city grammar school the seventh termers (because you stayed on another term to prepare for the then separate admissions test) were definitely not the creative lateral thinkers we were too busy rebelling and couldn't wait to get out They were a stolid hard working conformist lot pushed by their parents who went on to be teachers (not that there is anything wrong with teaching but of the ten or so you would think that if they were the brightest and best they would be amongst the ones who had successful careers in journalism, business, medicine, NGOs etc. or indeed the one that became an Headmistress herself the naughtiest girl in the school or had interesting lives in other ways, but they are not). Judging on the successful applicants from DDs school whilst I do not think the selection process does get the brightest and the best now either, I am sure only one of them would have stood any chance of getting in now.

Only around the top 10% of young people went to University
To get into Oxford or Cambridge was very difficult (unless you went to public school ) and competition was fierce.

I think this is probably fair. She's clearly not a stupid woman; her limitations are more to do with her personality than her intellect. And objectively she's in a very difficult position (one of her own choosing, of course), in that her party has been subject to a bloodless coup in which some really rather stupid and venal people have attained a thoroughly unhealthy degree of influence.

Where she can be criticised with some legitimacy is her decision to surround herself with people who won't take no for an answer even when no is the correct answer.

Nope she graduated with friends in 1977, and it was a big of a bone of contention amongst Oxbridge grads from 77 and 78 that they could not put 2.1 on job applications

olliegarchy99 Education and wisdom are not mutually inclusive.

Where she can be criticised with some legitimacy is her decision to surround herself with people who won't take no for an answer even when no is the correct answer

On a day when her home office is threatening two British children with no right to British residency, May is proving at best her lack of emotional and diplomatic intelligence, at worst it reveals her real moral compass.

I would agree with olliegarchy about the number going to university and the degrees handed out. I graduated in the early seventies and only 1 person got a first in my subject. Maybe 1/4 or 1/3 got 2:1s, the majority of us got 2:2s and a handful got thirds, with my University not awarding pass or ordinary degrees.

As for gaining admission, BCC was considered the Standard offer for many subjects, but Oxbridge candidates would be expected to do better, and then there were special entrance papers. If they passed those they could end up with an offer of two EEs.

What I would be interested in finding out, (still searching )is how other PMs in the UK and other female PMs in the rest of the world did academically. Mrs Thatcher apparently got a 2nd, and I believe that Indira Ghandi didn't complete her degree.

Yes whilst I do not doubt her intellect, it is her narrow mindedness, lack of empathy and emotional intelligence that concerns me. Her bull in a China shop approach to the Brexit negotiations being another manifestation. We are seeing a great deal more subtlety and attempts to understand all sides of the issue from the EU side.

I think she has completely the wrong personality for a Prime Minister. I think you do need someone who can talk to people and isn't afraid to go into the tea room to find out what people think and keep their finger on the pulse.

She might actually have been better in the role of Minister for Brexit, or whatever his title, than the hapless Davis. I don't think she would have come out with statements about not having thought about this or that. I think she would have been aware that there were areas she still needed to review.

I am pretty sure Benazir Bhutto got a first in PPE at Oxford after getting a Harvard degree. I can't find Aung San Su Ki degree classification at Oxford but she was regarded with great respect for her work on Burmese literature at SOAS.

Olliegarcy In May's time at Oxford there was one woman for every ten men and at other universities it was 1 woman for 8 men no comment on how or why I valued that information so greatly it has remained stored in my memory ever since

I think however you should not underestimate the influence that a generation of bluestocking, often as a result of war frustrated spinster or gay, teachers in Grammar Schools who were the first to blaze a trail through Oxford had on inspiring young women in Grammar Schools to apply. I suspect the numbers succeeding were out of proportion to girls from other schools, state and private.

I think however you should not underestimate the influence that a generation of bluestocking, often as a result of war frustrated spinster or gay, teachers in Grammar Schools who were the first to blaze a trail through Oxford had on inspiring young women in Grammar Schools to apply.

The two bluestocking Oxbridge teachers in my girls grammar school, who fit that description perfectly, did not inspire us to follow in their footsteps. Discussing the paper after one exam we were told sharply that we shouldn't have attempted a particular question because that had been designed to test Oxbridge aspirants. This made it clear that it was not us. In the seven years I was there, no one went to Oxbridge.

I would add that a couple of London University graduates, who would also have fitted the description of spinster, although I don't think either of them were frustrated or gay, were much more inspiring. Sadly they weren't responsible for preparing us for University, otherwise a few more of us would have made it.

Peregrina I know from what you have said before that your school seems to have been particularly poor at encouraging girls but my experience is certainly shared by others I know who went to northern grammar schools in Manchester, Lancashire and Yorkshire. perhaps it was a northern thing. Admittedly those teachers mainly inspired us to rebel, but to give them their due they were fiercely in favour of empowering girls to achieve and they did enable 10 out of 100 girls in my sixth form to go on to Oxbridge, with similar numbers at other northern grammar Schools I know of.

TM is typical of high church c of e attitudes imo....
"Well, I'm not in debt, why are you?"
"I'm not divorced. It's too easy to get a divorce these days."
"No one needed mobile phones in my day!"
Etc etc
They just can't fathom an experience outside their own comfort zone
It's odd
Complete and total lack of empathy

She is also completely humourless
Her fake shoulder shake laugh at PMQs the other week was a sight to see 😳

I was in the North Staffs/South Cheshire borders, which I would say was northern rather than southern. So many girls drifted off to Colleges of Education when they could easily have tackled a degree course, and many later did as mature students. I have met a lot of women who had the same experience. There were different sorts of Grammar Schools - the old Direct Grant Grammars, which did seem to have a strong academic reputation, and a fair few like mine.

I would suspect that Holton Girls Grammar, TM's old school, was probably more like mine. I am pretty sure it wasn't a Direct Grant Grammar (otherwise it would have gone Independent, like other Oxfordshire DG schools did when the County went comprehensive.) I suspect that she had a little luck on her side with someone taking an interest in her and she came from an intellectual home where aspiration was encouraged. I would love to know how other girls that she was at school with fared, education wise.