It’s been one whole year since Brexit, the day we officially voted to leave the European Union — and therefore one year since David Cameron resigned as Prime Minister in the style of Richard Nixon. That means it's also one year since everyone was worried about a Prime Minister Boris Johnson, and one year since Theresa May replaced him with her “strong and stable leadership.”
It’s been quite a wacky 365 days since.
In that time, we've seen May trigger Article 50, call a general election, right before the Brexit negotiations, in the hope of securing a stronger Conservative majority for the EU talks, and then having those hopes subsequently dashed when she lost the majority altogether and had to make a deal with the controversial unionist party – the DUP – simply to remain the Prime Minister.
Brexit talks have begun and they’re not pretty
May has begun the Brexit process negotiations following the disastrous UK election and according to EU representatives, the offer she has made regarding EU citizens’ rights is “pathetic” and totally removed from being “fair and generous” as she had previously promised.
This morning, a meeting is taking place where officials in the ever-lovable Department for Exiting the European Union will sit down with a group of representatives for Brits living overseas, who were outraged by what they call May’s “spin” on the issue of Brexit rights during her speech at a dinner in Brussels.
At the Brussels dinner yesterday, she referred to the Brexit offer she was making to guarantee EU citizens rights as “fair and generous,” but according to the people she made the offer to, it is anything but. They say the offer does not calm their anxieties, but in fact adds to them. This is partly, they say because she has written the offer in the “language of immigration law” and not the cast-iron, set-in-stone EU law, which changes everything.
This Brexit rights offer is also apparently not great for British people living in Europe. Two weeks ago, the EU offered them a lifetime guarantee of their pre-existing rights, but May did not make any mention of this last night, saying instead that her offer was only on the table if the EU matched it. So, the EU cares more about British people than their own Prime Minister does? She doesn’t acknowledge that just because they’re living overseas, they’re still British.
EU representatives: May’s offer is ‘slightly pathetic’
Nicolas Hatton, who founded 'the3million', a grassroots group fighting for the rights of UK settlers who have been coming in since last year’s referendum, said, “There is something slightly pathetic about the Prime Minister’s proposal,” because she made no reference whatsoever to what Hatton calls “the detailed, comprehensive offer” that was put forward by the EU, instead choosing to throw that by the wayside in favour of her own “strong and stable” Brexit.
He added that while she had herself described it as “fair and serious,” it is in fact “neither fair nor serious.”
British Sue Wilson, who lives in Spain and leads the Remainers of Spain, has outlined another concern over May’s Brexit offer, saying that it does not allow the European justice court a role in post-Brexit Britain. However, that court is the ultimate legal mediator, or go-between if you will, in EU matters, which includes violations of EU citizens’ rights, so obviously she doesn’t want those matters in May’s hands.
EU offer was ‘far more generous’
Wilson clearly hates Theresa May, as she said that her smug attitude, “acting as though she is making the first move” (by refusing to mention or acknowledge the EU’s own Brexit rights offer), and acting like “we should all be impressed and grateful for her generosity,” when, in Wilson’s and a lot of other people’s eyes, the offer that the EU already made on the same matter was “far more generous” for everyone involved, “both EU and UK citizens living abroad.”