Brexit: Theresa May's Bunker Buster

Brexit has proven to be Theresa May’s own personal Waterloo. Not so much because of the epic disaster it has turned into for her but because it has exposed her as the pedestrian politician she really is. Had David Cameron not resigned after the EU Referendum vote she would not have found herself catapulted into the role of prime minister. Had that not happened she would have continued her mediocre error prone stewardship in a ministerial capacity. 

As it is Theresa May assumed the role of prime minister promising; "Brexit means Brexit", "no deal is better than a bad deal" and the UK was about to take world trade agreements to a whole new level. What we are now left with is an ineffectual leader who has both failed to rally her own troops or put up much of a fight against her foreign opposition.

What we have seen is a prime minister who threw away her parliamentary majority, attempted (unsuccessfully) to conceal her true intentions during Brexit negotiations, and really has ended up broken and on her knees at a time the nation needs strong leadership. Theresa May has at every step of the way in the Brexit journey sacrificed sound management for political expediency. She came up with a deal that she didn't canvas support for before presenting it to the EU because she knew it was unlikely to be found acceptable by Westminster factions but she knew she could get agreement with the EU on it. This was despite the fact that she knew she had to come back to Westminster to have it ratified. Her strategy seems to have been to present Parliament with a 'fait accompli' then blame everyone else for not agreeing a deal. This was even though she knew her deal would not be agreeable to anyone.

I don't think Theresa May can be blamed for leaping at the opportunity to be prime minister. However, her almost total lack of a sense of duty that should come with the role has been startling. At every turn she seems to have opted to try and secure her position rather than secure the nation's best interests. Her initial cabinet appointments were designed to curry favour with the Brexiteers in the Conservative Party. At the early stage of negotiations with the EU she opted to go for a transitional post exit arrangement rather than embrace the nettle of actually negotiating new trade tariffs with EU. Even if she had agreed some indicative interim tariffs at that time it might have provided some reassurance to the public and economy about what to expect. Instead, she was swayed by the Business sector to go for a transitional period and remain in the Custom Union. She hadn't factored in the issue of what would happen to border arrangements in Ireland after the end of the transitional period.

Had Mrs May paused to think about the need to make some tough choices it might have occurred to her that the Republic of Ireland needed to maintain the trading status quo even more than the UK did. That is something she could have used as leverage in the negotiations rather than falling to her knees leopard skin pumps in hand begging for a transition period. By restricting her own options May allowed the Republic of Ireland to secure a veto when in fact it should have been pleading for a reasonable compromise.

At this point the British Government has run out of both ideas and time to negotiate an acceptable withdrawal from the EU. Theresa May has to take a huge part of the responsibility for that. Not only did she make a lot of wrong choices but she also appointed a lot of incompetent and uncommitted ministers. For a woman who has been the consummate political operator it appears that Theresa May’s political capital has finally run out. Unfortunately neither the nation nor history will judge her kindly and that is the tragic legacy of her long and dogged political career.