Alternatively , they want and have always wanted the hardest of hard Brexits . They know that they only way to do that and not commit political suicide is to have somebody else to blame when the economy etc goes tits up . The only way to do that is to have visible scapegoats in the EU . The only way to do that is to keep sniping at them until they poke their heads above the parapet and can become the new target . These comments will be reported in the Express and the Daily Mail as EU bureaucrats being hypocritical and attacking the UK for wanting sovereignty . Come the hard Brexit , they ' ll throw up their hands and say well , we tried bu t they were utterly unreasonable . Now we have to buckle down with this shitty situation which the EU created and unify and get past it . Though personally , I think the simplest explanation is the most likely May and her team really are as incompetent as they appear in every way to be .