Stop yielding to fanatics

The following is an excerpt from an editorial in The Guardian:

The very act of calling a confidence vote expressed arrogance and hypocrisy. The arrogance is in believing that Britain’s destiny should be settled by internal debate within the Tory party, disregarding the rest of the country. The hypocrisy is in trying such a thing in the name of democracy, claiming to channel “the will of the people” for a narrow partisan agenda.

Theresa May has many flaws and her misjudgments are a central cause of the current crisis, but not the only one. She has at least admitted that Brexit involves difficult trade-offs – between open trade and closed borders; between regulatory autonomy and market access. Leavers and remainers dislike the balance she has struck, but none can dispute that she has made choices.

She does not pretend there is a perfect Brexit, which elevates her above challengers peddling dangerous nodeal fantasies. May must now be more explicit in excluding that option from the menu of possible Brexit outcomes. She must use her reprieve to marginalize the cabal that has steered the Conservative party – and the country – to the brink of calamity.

To save herself she has sacrificed any prospect of serving beyond Brexit. Shabby deals that might have been done to procure support from MPs might also emerge. But yielding to fanatics and wreckers must now end... Her own interests and those of the nation are aligned in seeing Europhobe zealots dispatched back to the fringe of British politics.