Mrs May must halt the drift over Brexit
THIS paper has much respect for the Prime Minister, a courageous politician whose only motive for seeking high office was a wish to serve her country and all its people (which is more than can be said for many who want her job, and others who held it before her).
She showed her courage when, as Home Secretary, she stood up to bullies in the corrupt Police Federation. She demonstrated it again with her robust retaliation against Vladimir Putin after his attempted murder of the Skripals in Salisbury – a stand which, incidentally, sent her poll ratings soaring.
But on Brexit, though it grieves the Mail to say it, Theresa May has allowed a profoundly worrying sense of drift to develop. Indeed, she has given the impression of a captain of a mutinous crew, sailing a rudderless ship across a turbulent sea, unsure herself where she wants to go.
It’s bad enough that she has delayed publication of a White Paper setting out the Government’s Brexit strategy – suggesting that two years on, she still can’t get ministers to agree on a plan.
Worse, she even appears to have permitted Olly Robbins, her civil servant Brexit adviser, to offer the EU an open- ended commitment that the UK will remain in the customs union until a solution is found to the footling side-issue of the Irish border.
If true, this could mean remaining in the bloc indefinitely, unable to strike our own trade deals and bound by Brussels rules over which we’ll have no say. This must surely be unthinkable. Indeed, David Davis is right to make a stand on this issue – though the Mail profoundly hopes he will stay at his post, since his resignation as Brexit Secretary would be a huge blow to our negotiations.
Yes, the Mail understands the difficulties confronting Mrs May. If it hadn’t been for last year’s botched election campaign, she could have shrugged off the frankly treacherous conduct of the House of Lords – packed with unelected, we-know-best third raters who sneer at the electorate.
As it is, she has to worry about die-hard Remainers on the Tory backbenches and a divided Cabinet, some of whose members’ disloyalty to her appals this paper.
Up against her, too, is an unscrupulous Opposition interested only in causing maximum damage to the Tories – and to hell with the country’s interests.
Indeed, Jeremy Corbyn’s latest chaotic policy would keep Britain tied to the EU, bound by its judges, locked in its customs union and committed to free movement. The only difference we’d notice after Brexit would be losing our say in making the rules.
But leave aside that if we were to cave in to the EU’s negotiators now, we’d be utterly at the mercy of Brussels for ever after.
The fact is that every economic indicator gives the lie to Remoaners’ continuing efforts to scare us. Growth remains steady. Employment is at a record high. Orders for British goods and services are flooding in, while EU businesses clamour for free trade to continue. Only this week, the boss of Audi said he was desperate for such a deal.
Indeed, the irony is that it’s not Britain but the EU that’s collapsing before our eyes, with the outlook for the eurozone ‘dramatically darkened’ and the continent convulsed by political turmoil.
Yet Mrs May has seemed willing to sit back while the bibulous Jean-Claude Juncker and his cronies sneer at our country and accuse her of ‘living in fantasy land’ if she believes we can leave the EU unpunished.
The time has surely come for her to go on the attack, slapping down Remoaners, boosting the wilting morale of the proBrexit majority and telling Mr Juncker and Co that they are the fantasists if they think they can humiliate the UK with impunity.
This is a great country, with great opportunities opening up to us. Mrs May needs to find the language to proclaim this from the rooftops.