As we wait for the vote to be carried out on Tuesday in the House of Commons regarding whether our Parliament will back the Brexit proposal by Theresa May, it is beginning to become clear that our options as a nation have dramatically closed down. Many people are clearly opposed to the May proposals and equally there are some of the same people plus a few who support her deal who would prefer for us to remain in the EU, if the Government could find a way of admitting that the departure whilst possible and supported by in 2016 by 52% of those who voted is so deeply threatening to our nation that it will lead to a level of destruction of our economy that would make the 1970’s economic experience look like a walk in the park. The fact that our future outside of the EU is now looking very challenging is demonstrated by two separate matters. The first is that the Norway Government is not wanting a much larger and highly chaotic nation to join their arrangements with the EU. The size difference between us would mean that even if there was an agreement achieved that our dominant Brexit supporting politicians would want to be sure that we did not lose any sense of sovereignty and so rather than being forced to accept that Germany and France are at a similar level to us and therefore we need to play the game with them, these same people would want to dominate Norways arrangements due to the size of our economy compared to theirs. The second is that the prospects of our establishing a Trade agreement with the USA while Donald Trump is President is very unlikely. Add to that the prospects of us establishing trade deals with the likes of China and some of the other nations that we lack a natural connection with and the prospects for our nation begin to look very limited. Even the Commonwealth which is the one small safety net will not be a simple set of agreements and the benefits in terms of trading arrangements will be rather small, particularly if we are not willing to share our sovereignty with a group of nations that will have different priorities to ours. The big challenge our nation faces is that we have some very vociferous politicians who completely lack the willingness or competence to come up with an alternative to a May deal, even if the EU was willing to consider this, and in our journey since the 2015 General Election have made us as a nation appear to be a very poor partner for any other nation to work with!