The PROBLEM OF THERESA

As the blessed summer recess sends MPs to their favourite faraway fleshpots where they hope their sins will not be featured in The Sun, the more contemplative Tory MPs wake up screaming in the night seeing horrid visions of a fouled-up Brexit, lost constituencies and the nightmare of a Jeremy Corbyn government putting the UK back 73 years to the advent of dismal Clem Attlee, or even 370 years to the heyday of the Levellers. These MPs would normally simply demand sharp action from their Leader, but alas, their Leader is Theresa May, already found wanting on numerous counts and as inspirational as a limp stalk of last month’s rhubarb. A low murmur can be heard in the Shires and in the loyal heartland of England, with due acknowledgement to Rogers and Hammerstein, asking in agony “How do you solve a problem like Theresa?”

Theresa's time to depart

Our erstwhile European “friends” could offer rapid answers. The French could volunteer “Madame la Guillotine”, the Czechs “Defenestration”, the Spanish “The Garrotte” and the Germans, spoilt for choice from their own dark history, would suggest “The Firing Squad”. Of course, the Russians deployed an ice-pick on Trotsky and pistol shots to the forehead for Beria. The Americans have seen 4 Presidents succumb to an assassin’s bullet but the British have only witnessed one violent end to a Prime Minister and that was Spencer Perceval in 1812, but his assailant was clearly deranged. No, we Brits want a constitutional solution for Theresa’s finale, bloodless but decisive and irrevocable.

Sadly, the electoral arithmetic could hardly be less promising. The Conservatives have no majority in Parliament and depend on the support of the Democratic Unionists from Ulster.

Party	Seats
Conservative	316
Labour	258
Scottish National Party	35
Liberal Democrat	12
Democratic Unionist Party	9
Independent	7
Sinn Féin	7
Plaid Cymru	4
Green Party	1
Speaker	1
Total number of seats	650

Theresa was chosen as the Leader to unify the badly split Tories – to paper over the cracks. She gambled but lost in an attempt to strengthen her party’s position by calling a snap election in June 2017, which made her position worse. Her own feeble campaigning was much to blame.  She has since formulated her “Chequers” proposal, much too concessionary to the EU in the view of most Brexiteers but supported by many other Tories. The EU has yet to pronounce but recent experience is that it will react entirely negatively. A “no-deal” Brexit is a real possibility with every Remainer Cassandra prophesying doom. The torrent of gloomy predictions emanating from the Treasury since 2016 have actually all proved false. Theresa might conceivably win a vote of confidence in the Commons if some half-respectable deal were negotiated but a new man at the helm would struggle to reconcile the 60-80 diehard Brexiteers with the 100 or so tepid Remainer Tories and the mass of stolid backbenchers.

The fact is that Teresa is not a believer in Brexit and has no vision of its stimulus and opportunities. The other leading Tories - Boris Johnson, Jacob Rees Mogg, David Davis, Michael Gove and Philip Hammond – are saving their powder for a showdown at the right moment, but that moment has not yet arrived. Every delay makes Theresa better entrenched and a feeble Brexit deal more likely. All great political parties need maintenance, the speeches to warm the grass-roots, the flesh-pressing bonhomie, the private words of confidence and appreciation from the Leader and the convincing performances before the media – all little arts which Theresa has failed to master. A party not thus maintained will fail and collapse as surely as that ill-fated Morandi motorway bridge in Genoa.

An unmaintained Genoa bridge

Utter despair is not the rational reaction. Let us peek into the future, as I see it. A deal will emanate from Brussels and London, not ideal, but as Gove said “Do not make the perfect the enemy of the good”. The House of Commons by a free vote or (less likely) a second referendum will approve the deal. All in the UK are heartily sick of the Brexit discussions and want to move on, convinced that the EU is not our kind of game nor led by our kind of people. A handful of Labour Brexiteers will support the deal, and the views of the declining SNP, the moribund Liberal Democrats and assorted oddballs outside the Tories may sway the parliamentary vote. We will leave on 29 March 2019 as agreed with a transition period until 31 December 2020. What new alignments on Left and Right shall emerge? Soon after 29 March a new Tory Leader will call and convincingly win a general election.

Who knows? We will see!

SMD

26.08.2018

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2018.

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