The Brexit mess gets messier as the deadline nears
For more than two years, British Prime Minister Theresa May has been looking for a pair of exit ramps — one to successfully navigate her country out of the European Union, as called for by voters in a 2016 referendum, and another to avoid further damage to her deeply divided Conservative Party. The damage to herself appears irreparable.
The prime minister was dealt a terrible hand by her predecessor, David Cameron. It was Cameron’s decision to call the Brexit referendum in the first place, hoping — and perhaps believing — that it would once and for all quiet the anti-Europe wing of his party. It proved a spectacularly failed gamble.
Unexpectedly, the referendum measure narrowly passed, a crushing blow to a political establishment that had lined up almost uniformly in favor of remaining. It also foreshadowed a political revolt by anti-elitist voters that hit the United States a few months later with the election of Donald Trump as president.
And as Britain nears the March 29 deadline for leaving the E.U., Trump continues to undermine the already weakened prime minister as he wages an international war against elites.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/the-brexit-mess-gets-messier-as-the-deadline-nears/2019/03/20/8b40b1c4-4b28-11e9-8cfc-2c5d0999c21e_story.html
