Theresa May was warned about Brexit. She didn’t listen.
By Anne Applebaum
Columnist
April 2 at 5:08 PM
At every fateful historical turning point — every time a bad decision is taken or a wrong choice is made — there is always someone who tries to stop it, someone who predicts the consequences, someone who proposes an alternative plan. Cicero tried to halt the fall of the Roman Republic; Churchill opposed appeasement. And there are less mythical, more recent examples, too: Before the invasion of Iraq, the State Department conducted a massive study of the country, foreseeing many of the problems, making many proposals for a post-Saddam Hussein regime — all of which were ignored by the Pentagon after the invasion in 2003.
Usually, the problem isn’t that no one knows that things are going to go badly. The problem is that the people in charge do know but don’t care, don’t agree or simply have other priorities. This is what is happening right now in Britain, where a bitterly divided cabinet has so far refused to come up with an alternative to the European Union-United Kingdom deal negotiated by the British prime minister, Theresa May. Her plan has been rejected three times by the House of Commons, a failure of historic proportions. And yet not only has she refused to choose something else, she has not wanted to discuss anything else in public.
And so the discussion has continued without her. Anyone who tunes in to parliamentary debates or watches “Prime Minister’s Questions” knows that debates in the House of Commons can often seem ritualized, with both sides trading carefully scripted insults and sound bites. But on Monday night, the British Parliament suddenly became a place of substance again, as several members made serious, considered, alternative proposals, and then answered tough questions about them. For once, a critical political debate was not taking place on television, or behind the scenes, but on a public stage, inside the institution created for that purpose.
more:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/04/02/every-historic-disaster-has-been-predicted-by-someone-why-dont-those-power-listen/?utm_term=.55e3f1865897
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