Der Spiegel Interview with Ken Clarke - excellent insights into background & current mess
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/interview-with-kenneth-clarke-on-brexit-a-1252188.html
Since the prime minister has committed herself to persuade the Europeans to reopen the Withdrawal Agreement,
everybody is waiting for a miraculous solution.
In the meantime, the government is trying to avoid having any serious business in the House of Commons.
On Monday, we spent a whole day debating sports!
I have been here a very long time, but I have never seen such a crazy situation in all my life on such a serious subject.
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The prime minister is obsessed with keeping the Conservative Party in one piece.
I have argued for months that the moderate majority of the House of Commons should come together on a cross-party basis.
We can only reach an agreement if Tory remainers and Labour remainers strike a compromise.
But Theresa May has not really reached out to them.
Instead, she is making a desperate effort to win over the hardline right-wing people of our party.
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We can't carry on being so insane
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There was always a group of nationalists in the Tory party that didn't come to terms with our changed role in the world.
In their eyes we have an imperial destiny.
But that was fading away and we were becoming a rather pro-European party in the 1980s under Margaret Thatcher.
Remember, it was us who had to persuade the Germans and French of the single market.
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She rejected Jacques Delors' idea of a more social Europe.
Her fall in 1990 enraged the Tory far-right.
They thought it was all a kind of pro-European plot.
The European issue became symbolic of the betrayal of Margaret Thatcher.
It became a spiritual event - revenge for Margaret.
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They have formed a party within the party.
They have their own leader, they have their own whip.
I would love to see them leaving the party. It would help.
And it would stop Theresa May in giving too high a priority to trying to keep these ultrafanatics on side.
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It's a very nasty climate out there. People are retreating into angry simplicities.
Half the population is angry about politicians not getting on with it, they're not following the detail,
they haven't a clue what the Irish backstop is, and they couldn't care less.
They just want it to be over.
The other half does follow quite fairly, intensely, more than usual.
They are divided in angry remainers who are ever more ferociously for remaining
and angry leavers who ever more ferociously feel they are being betrayed.
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The Brexit debate has absolutely crippled our party-political system and it has distorted the usual process of political debate.
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This is almost a nervous breakdown, we need to stop it.