Pragmatism and compromise in Brexit

“In the referendum on 23 June 2016 – the largest ever democratic exercise in the United Kingdom – the British people voted to leave the European Union…

…But to do so requires pragmatism and compromise on both sides.”
UK PM Theresa May in the foreword to the White Paper on the Future of the UK’s relationship with the EU, July 12 2018.

TWO years after the UK voted to exit the European Union, they are still there. How can this be? It seems that the same non-market forces that created the EU cartel have taken control of the Brexit thing.

Were it left to market forces to guide the exit my guess is that,

1. The exit would have been completed by now; and
2. Profitable trade links would remain and the bureaucracy ditched

But it’s not up to the market to decide what to keep and what to cut. The clearly visible hands of the non-market appointed negotiators have taken a simple problem and complicated it. Theresa May’s statement above is classic professional politician inertia and the entire document is poetry as opposed to science, but I particularly like the reference to ‘…pragmatism and compromise…’ for the following reason:

Free trade entails loading up a container with stuff and sending it to somewhere to people who want it. Finding customers and delivering a product at a price which satisfies each party to the transaction – buyer and seller – is the ultimate expression of ‘…pragmatism and compromise…’. Ironically, Mrs May hit the nail on the head – leave it to the market! – but she neither understands it nor did she mean it.