ANALYSIS
IT has become an almost a cliche to pay tribute to the Prime Minister’s resilience while simultaneously deriding her lack of political nous.
She is stubborn and dogged, her supporters say. She never gives up. She hung around to clear up the Brexit mess left by her awful predecessor. Only a hard heart could disagree with this analysis.
Theresa May also deserves a degree of sympathy for her decision to push for a general election in 2017. Almost every commentator, it should be recalled, believed she would rout Jeremy Corbyn and lay the path for a Brexit deal. The fault lay in the hapless campaign she led, not in the triggering of an election.
Nearly two years later, May is the central character in a Westminster horror story. No matter how she rolls the dice, no majority appears to exist for any form of Brexit. She is bringing back her draft withdrawal agreement this week, but she is in need of a political miracle.
This is where personal sympathy ends and political blame can rightly be aimed in her direction. May, and nobody else, is the architect of a Brexit impasse that could see the UK crash out of the European Union without a deal. MPs “voted” against this outcome last week, but only EU member states can grant an extension to Article 50. The EU can name its price.
May’s historic blunder was in laying out a series of Brexit “red lines” at her party’s conference in 2016. Showing off in front of the Tory faithful, she ruled out the UK staying in either the customs union or the single market, which at a stroke necessitated the creation of the hated Northern Ireland backstop. Withdrawing the UK from the scope of the European Court of Justice - a May obsession from her days at the Home Office - was also written in blood.
Her rigid approach may have drawn applause from hundreds of elderly Tories in the conference hall, but the red lines made it impossible for Labour, the SNP or the Lib Dems to support her Brexit plan. She put herself at the mercy of right-wing colleagues in European Research Group and the Democratic Unionist Party. The ideologues were given a veto.
May’s mistake was in forgetting her party’s history. In 1995, John Major was challenged for the leadership by Cabinet colleague John Redwood, whose campaign was motivated by hostility to the EU. A photograph of his supporters from that period is a historical curiosity. It shows a small band of hardliners - people like the late Teddy Taylor and Teresa Gorman - who could not compromise on their loathing of the EU. This grouplet is now a large faction and is blocking May’s deal. She has allowed herself to be captured by the ERG and held hostage.
Brexit is consuming the nation, but the UK’s departure from the EU is a tragic plot line in a Tory soap opera. David Cameron committed his party to a referendum in a bid to appease his right wing and stop the rise of UKIP. He refrained from “blue on blue” attacks during the campaign for fear of splitting the Conservatives. From beginning to end, Cameron was concerned about party management. May has copied this insular strategy.
Her flawed approach brings two options into focus this week. The first is for her ERG tormentors to back her deal, which would be followed by a short extension to Article 50. Few people expect the militants to turn into eleventh-hour pragmatists. The second option is, on the back of her deal being rejected for a third time, to ask the EU for a much lengthier delay.
Such an outcome would present a huge opportunity for a Prime Minister who was concerned with bringing the country together, rather than healing her party’s wounds. With a year’s breathing room, she could ditch her red lines and hurl the ERG into obscurity. If May backed either a soft Brexit, or a confirmatory vote on her deal, a majority of MPs would follow her.
The last thirty years suggest that May will look inwards, not outwards. Europe brought down Thatcher, Major and Cameron. Expect the same obsession to claim a fourth scalp.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel