Ed Miliband: I’ve got to embrace Brexit

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At the end of last month, President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen warned the EU will not hesitate to use the “real teeth” in the Brexit deal to punish the UK Government for breaching its obligation. As MEPs prepared to vote on the historic agreement, marking the end of four years of high political drama, Ms von der Leyen said: “This agreement comes with real teeth with a binding dispute settlement mechanism and the possibility for unilateral remedial measures where necessary. “And let me be very clear: we do not want to have to use these tools, but we will not hesitate to use them if necessary. They are essential to ensure full compliance with the [trade and cooperation agreement], and with the withdrawal agreement, which both were negotiated in such fine details and agreed by both sides.”

Since the end of the transition period on January 1, the UK Government has been accused of breaching its commitments in Northern Ireland and on an agreement on fisheries.

However, Brexiteers believe it is all part of a worrying pattern.

Ever since Britain voted to leave in 2016, Vote Leavers have accused Brussels of wanting to harm the UK during the Brexit talks as a deterrent to other countries that might have been thinking of getting out.

In his 2019 book “The Great Betrayal”, newspaper columnist Rod Liddle claimed one of the main reasons why former Prime Minister Theresa May miserably failed during the negotiations with the bloc was because she “seriously underestimated the EU’s desire and need to punish the UK”.

He explained: “[It was] a deterrent to other countries that might have been thinking of getting out, and thus displaying to the rest of Europe an intransigence and implacability, whereas the British seemed to assume that negotiations would have about them a certain consensus founded on the basis that the EU needed a decent deal with the UK to preserve its own export market etc.

“May and her team were too slow to understand the hostility.

“Yet they had been given every indication that this was precisely what would happen.

“On March 30, 2017, the European Parliament’s representative to Brexit, the liberal Belgian MEP Guy Verhofstadt said: ‘Britain has shot itself in the foot.’

““We intend to shoot you in the other.’

“That seems to me a decent indication of what the British might expect.”

Mr Liddle added that on the same day, the Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte also demanded that the British be “brought back to earth” while hitting out at Mrs May’s “Alice in Wonderland” Brexit aspirations and claiming Britain’s aims were “totally unrealistic”.

The newspaper columnist noted: “This was before the negotiations had even begun.”

In an exclusive interview with Express.co.uk, historian and head of an Icelandic free-market think tank Hjörtur J. Guðmundsson echoed Mr Liddle’s claims.

He said: “Obviously the EU wants to punish Brexit Britain.

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“Brussels is always thinking about politics.

“Just look at the eurozone… if they were thinking about economics, the eurozone would have never covered all the countries that are in the monetary union today.

“How the economy behaves is not the same in all the euro countries so they just did this as a step towards integration, to push for a federal state.”

Mr Guðmundsson added: “I can say this: ‘if the leaders of the EU are so convinced that their club is a desirable one and the British are making a huge mistake, then why should they make life difficult for Britain?

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“Why shouldn’t they help them? Knowing that in a few years Britain would recognise its mistake and come back asking for membership again?

“The EU would be in a much stronger position to ask for certain things and ask them to adopt the euro, for example.”

He concluded: “Why are they trying to make an example of Britain for other EU members?

“It suggests EU leaders don’t have much confidence in this project and that they don’t actually believe it is a great club to be in.”

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