Tories should now help May to get us out of this crisis
WEDNESDAY’S confidence vote was no ringing endorsement of the Prime Minister’s leadership, but it was nevertheless decisive. It is pointless for the Prime Minister’s critics on the backbenches to try to continue to drive for her resignation.
In some ways, the confidence vote strengthens Theresa May’s position. The matter of the leadership is now settled for the next 12 months – and maybe for a little longer than that. Given that she has ruled herself out of fighting the next election as leader, rivals can expect her to step down perhaps some time towards the end of 2020. There will be less itching among Conservatives to depose her before then – assuming, that is, the Government survives that long.
In any case, it is hardly as if there is another able candidate for the post of Prime Minister, who would fare better at the nigh-on impossible task of delivering a Brexit that pleases everyone. I wouldn’t be surprised if potential Conservative leaders were quietly relieved at Wednesday’s result – they can now defer acting on their leadership ambitions until slightly calmer times, once we are out of the European Union.
May’s critics now need to step back and ask what constructive steps they can take to help achieve a reasonable Brexit – so that the Government can somehow get beyond the current crisis and achieve a worthwhile legacy.
THE Prime Minister’s opponents are right that the Brexit withdrawal deal is botched and cannot get through the Commons in its current form. The Government has no majority and all opposition parties – bar one offmessage Liberal Democrat who has resigned his party’s whip in order to vote for Mrs May’s deal – have vowed to defeat it.
The problem is clear: the Irish backstop, which would place some sort of regulatory border between Stranraer and Belfast and from which the UK would have no unilateral right to leave.
Take away that sticking point and there is much to be said for the political declaration that lays out the UK’s future relationship with the EU. It proposes free trade with zero tariffs – with Britain at liberty to do trade deals with other countries around the world. We would be outside the Common Agricultural Policy, the Common Fisheries Policy. We would – once the promised £39billion had been paid – pay no further into the EU’s coffers.
If Tory backbenchers could indicate their support for the positive aspects of the withdrawal agreement it would help enormously. EU leaders have repeatedly said that they will refuse to renegotiate the backstop, and May herself spoke only of seeking “reassurances” from the EU that it will not abuse the power that the withdrawal agreement vests in it.
What May needs now is some encouragement to up her rhetoric, bang a few heads together in Brussels – and persuade EU leaders that they really will have to introduce some kind of mechanism by which Britain could unilaterally exit the backstop. Either that, or as an alternative, she negotiates an extension of Article 50 so that Britain remains an EU member until a trade deal can be signed.
Should Mrs May manage to extract a genuine compromise out of the EU, then all is not lost for her premiership. There will be a life beyond Brexit, if only May and her Government can survive the next few months. The PM already has some achievements to her name that have tended to become lost in the fog of Brexit. She can point to wages – now rising at their fastest rate in real terms since the 2008/09 crisis – and to the lowest unemployment in 45 years.
She can point to lower income tax bills for the lowpaid – the personal tax allowance is now nearly twice what it was when Labour were in power, and the minimum wage is substantially higher.
ALLOWING people to keep more of what they earn has helped to mitigate the “benefits trap” whereby, perversely, people could find themselves worse off if they got themselves a job.
There is more money for the NHS – more, in fact, that Jeremy Corbyn promised it during the 2017 general election campaign.
There are failures, too. The rise in knife crime can be traced back to her decision as Home Secretary in 2014 to reduce stop and search – knife crime, which had been falling up until that point, responded with an immediate rise.
In other areas there are the beginnings of a positive record. Housebuilding is up and runaway inflation in housing tamed. But, with prices still unaffordable for many, the Government must look at other ways in which the dream of home-ownership can be realised for millions.
It is hugely promising, too, that negotiations have begun for a trade deal between Britain and the US – something which the EU has notably failed to achieve. The efforts to make post-Brexit Britain a champion of free trade and a magnet for overseas investment must be stepped up. There are many countries, from Australia to South Korea, who want to do business with us as soon as we are free to do so.
Theresa May’s challenge was always going to be to achieve a legacy beyond Brexit. If she can find a way through the Parliamentary impasse she has – by virtue of this week’s confidence vote – won herself a little time to achieve something on other fronts.
There is no reason why, when she leaves office in perhaps a couple of years’ time, that Theresa May cannot justify the faith that 200 Conservative MPs put in her on Wednesday.
‘Matter of leadership is settled for a year’