“No deal is ...” – Theresa May

Theresa May repeats, “No deal is better than a bad deal,” talking about her preference to exit the Euro zone, come what may.

What May may mean is that even without any deal with the EU, Brexit is OK for UK as compared to a bargain that gives Britain the short end of the stick. But, the phrase does not necessarily mean only that.

In one way of reading, the saying is OK, that Britain would exit without a deal and would be none the worse for that. But, the more nuanced reading is, a bad deal to Britain is the best deal that Britain can hope! That is, whatever the deal may be, it cannot be better than the bad deal! Bad deal is the best.

Perhaps, this is what May means! Let Europe give Britain as bad a deal as possible and May maybe happy with it, as nothing else could have been better, as she herself claimed.

When we were taught to convert a sentence between the comparative and superlative adjectives, this is how it was to be done! I am just going back to my roots.

Raghuram Ekambaram