Theresa May cannot and will not drop the basics of her Brexit deal

After two years of negotiations - of blood, sweat and tears, as Winston Churchill said of the war with Nazi Germany - Theresa May just cannot contemplate giving up her Brexit deal. She has decisively lost the vote in the House of Commons but she is still hanging on to her deal as the best way forward for the UK and will only be prepared to soften its edges, not its fundamental core. Although this is based on the conviction that what she has negotiated is the best for the country, someone has to tell her: "Prime Minister, your deal has been thrown over the cliff, there is no May deal anymore. No one wants it." The trouble with this argument which I guess is true, is that no one has come up with an obviously better solution. "Let the UK stay in the EU customs union, then we might be on your side," shouts Labour. Ok, but Mrs May will argue, this is not what the people of this country voted for. They voted by a small but significant majority to leave the EU. Does staying in the customs union honour that referendum vote? No. Mrs May who voted to remain in the EU clearly feels, as prime minister, duty bound to give the majority of the voters exactly what they wanted. Ah, but here's the loophole in her conviction. The people who voted to leave the EU did so because given the choice courtesy of David Cameron, Mrs May's predecessor, they just couldn't vote FOR the EU. For a number of reasons. One was immigration and the free movement of labour throughout the EU resulting in the UK being the favourite EU country for Poles, Bulgarians, Hungarians, Czechs and Romanians. Another was EU bureaucracy. Another was all the money the UK seemed to be sending over to Brussels. Another was the shape of EU bananas etc etc. So they voted Leave because they thought, "we don't need all those money-wasting European civil servants and politicians telling us what to do." What they didn't know or take into account were the full implications of leaving the EU. The Northern Ireland backstop was not something they had heard of, let alone understood. They had some sort of idea that if we left the EU it would be back to Rule Britannia, back to some form of greatness in which we could survive much much better in this new globalised world. And, thanks to false promises offered by Brexiteers, they were told that leaving the EU would save us huge amounts of money which we could then spend on the National Health Service and other socially important programmes. It was all lies and deliberate deception. So the idea that Theresa May is sticking with her Brexit deal because she thinks she is being faithful to the referendum voters is simply no longer valid. Since the referendum in 2016 we have all changed, we all know better what leaving the EU means, and maybe, maybe, some of the Leavers have become Remainers. Either way, Mrs May should be prepared to move from her stubborn position and acknowledge that the UK and its people are different now, and closer ties with the EU would be acceptable. The trouble is, would a second referendum, a second people's vote, provide the answers? I fear not. As I have said before, it could make the whole issue even more confusing. But what other alternative is there? Certainly not a snap general election. We have already had one of those and it was a disaster for the May government, and for the country. WHAT A MESS!!