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The leadership race motivates people to engage in non-solutions and radicalise that behaviour - at an enormous cost to the country. Let’s look at this, shall we?
Candidates are stumbling over themselves to be the hardest negotiator:Hunt promises to be tough,Raab will make proposals that nobody dares to make,Johnson will hold back the financial settlement until a trade deal is struck and I am sure someone brags about laser-vision. Helpful?
For their election prospects it seems that yes. The electorate they cater for thinks the harder the negotiator the better. It reminds of the days when we thought SAS experience was helpful. Because. You know: I can kill my opponent with a look.
But then in negotiations you don’t want to kill your opponent. And a black belt in martial arts is great if you need to do Judo with your opponent, but seriously, you rarely do that at the negotiating table...
Subject matter knowledge, on the other hand, is helpful. Negotiating experience, too. But even the perfect negotiator won’t get to a result if (s)he doesn’t know what that perfect result is.
We are split between nothin at all, a customs union, a single market, a CETA-style FTA, a customs union + a single market. And flying unicorns dragging coloured strands of blockchain through the air.
What we need is someone who can bring about a strong domestic majority on what we want. And that should preferably something we could get. That is the quality we should be looking for. Not the capacity to kill in hand to hand combat.
