Thankfully the UK government disagrees with your submissive position. You are simply upholding the bullying culture of the EU which you supposedly despise when they are dealing with Catalonia.
You have evaded the issue - are you disputing that Britain has outstanding debts which should be dealt with first ? There is no dealing with Catalonia - they are not doing anything, which they should be, so there is no parallel.
The UK government has acknowledged its financial commitments, there is no reason why discussions about this cannot be taking place simultaneously with trade talks. This is purely a bullying tactic employed by the EU to reduce the available time.
The EU. has to clear up the details of the divorce settlement before there can be any talk of the conditions of the future relationship - I would have thought that was obvious.
As soon as one starts to talk about the method of leaving, your average Brexiteer starts going on about money. There are three elements to this agreement, not one, and the UK government accepted that was how the talks should be structured. No one knows how much money is involved, but it is clear that the other two have not been sorted. As both of these elements involve the lives of millions of people, you could argue they are the more important parts.
The EU has declined the UK's preference to sort out the joint issues of migrant status because it was more concerned with using the ransom as a bargaining ploy. May's offer to sort out the residency terms were rejected at the start of negotiations. It was the EU that prioritised cash over peoples lives. This is quite consistent with its attitude to Southern European countries where the Germans in particular are quite content to let its citizens suffer to protect the 'project'.
The sick man of Europe is at it again, mass disruption caused by French industrial action. So glad Thatcher stopped most of this nonsense in the UK decades ago. French air-traffic strike grounds 100,000 travellers across Europe.
You do seem to have a very distorted view of what has been going on. The UK tried to divide the EU by going along to Germany with some offers in the early days, but as was pointed out the EU had discussed and come to a conclusion on what the means of departure should be. All countries agreed to the three conditions and have stuck to them, while the UK is still going round and round in circles. All three of the conditions carry equal weight as it is necessary to agree all of them, not just one or two.
You cannot escape the fact that the UK put the lives of the migrants affected as priority. This was simple task to agree on and could have given certainty to many. Merkel decided money was more important so continued any uncertainty without any regard to these people. The EU have shown welfare for its citizens is a low priority.
Hopefully the plans to join Nafta are well under way. Ministers make plan for UK to join trans-Atlantic trade alliance bigger than EU if no deal on Brexit
As I said above there are three parts that have to be dealt with at the same time. N.Ireland has both commercial and people problems that have to be solved, and all that has been presented so far is some "blue sky" thinking. It is clear that we should have had a very long period of work formulating some policies before Article 50 was presented. There was never a time line on this, and when you look at both main parties still unable to agree with their own members, it would have been better to do some serious work and known where this was taking us.
Good time to join it with Trump doing his best to tear the agreement up. Do people actually believe some of this stuff?
Interestingly Maybot in her speech was quite clear about paying outstanding debts and honouring commitments Would any business person want to continue to trade with a partner that didn't??
No, the migrant residency issue could have been agreed easily very early if May's offer had been taken up, Merkel ensured those involved were just pawns to use in negotiations. The EU's negotiating stance is clearly one of a misguided sense of self importance.
It is the EU's misguided view of keeping the European superstate 'project' on track at all costs that is the problem. It is the EU that seems to be tearing itself apart at the moment. Independence problems in Spain, Industrial unrest in France, and vastly differing views on the way forward for EU members. The UK is leaving at a good time.
The UK government was always willing to pay the costs it was committed to, even more probably. What it will not do is pay the Micky Mouse figure invented as an intentional blocking mechanism.
The trouble is that the UK still hasn't put forward an acceptable plan. I for one would not accept it, but then what is suggested for us is different.
