British Prime Minister Theresa May has outlined plans to potentially extend Article 50 if no Brexit deal is agreed before the March deadline. Sputnik has discussed the potential delay of the withdrawal with political commentator Keith Rowe.

Sputnik: Would extending Article 50 be beneficial to either the UK or the EU?

Keith Rowe: It’s not only a waste of time, it’s a total betrayal of the 17.4 million people that voted to leave.

It’s not a question of cutting losses or anything like that, this is what we voted for and this is what we want, to be able to trade freely across the world, to make our own laws, to control our own borders, all these issues which have been very well rehearsed and made clear over such a long period of time.

We’ve [for] far too long had dragging heels and everything else by the government, we need to get on with it and need to be just leaving now on WTO terms on 29 March; done.

Sputnik: Would we be in this situation with a different prime minister?

Keith Rowe: We’ve seen an absolute lesson in how not to negotiate by Theresa May, and it’s quite clear that her heart isn’t in the project at all either.

She was a Remainer, and she’s now hedging her bets as to how she actually voted. The point is that we can see that she is not truly behind us leaving, she’s procrastinated, wasted time and if we’d have had a strong negotiator and a clear plan, this would have been done and dusted a very long time ago.

Sputnik: Would Labour have handled the situation any better than the Conservatives?

Keith Rowe: Labour would have been even worse. They are terrible, not fit to govern in so many ways; the thought of Jeremy Corbyn negotiating all these deals for us is just impossible to imagine.

Both parties are in a terrible mess, but I’m of the considered opinion that the MPs and the parties that we’ve got at the moment are of the lowest grade that I can imagine, certainly in my lifetime, and probably before that.

In my view, the House of Commons really needs a clear-out of a lot of the people that are there, and we need to rethink the electoral system, because this two-party, first-past-the-post system is too cosy for the established parties, and we need something that will represent the people in a far better way than the system we’ve got at the moment.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the contributor and do not necessarily reflect Sputnik's position.





The views and opinions expressed in the article do not necessarily reflect those of Sputnik.