Shambling Theresa is going down Tubes

Tories prove (Groucho) Marx right

LONDON Underground staff write pearls of wisdom on their public notice boards to give commuters something to think about.

They even do this at Westminster Tube station, which most politicians use. Perhaps they see this as casting pearls before swine.

Travellers are treated to the sayings of great philosophers such as Aristotle, Nietzsche and Kierkegaard and on my way to Parliament the other morning it was Marx. Groucho, not Karl. The thought for the day was: “Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.”

That sums up the Conservative Party rather well.

David Cameron looked for trouble when he plunged Britain into a Brexit referendum.

He misdiagnosed the mood of voters, which was to reject anything conventional politicians like Cameron put forward.

Unconventional politicians such as Donald Trump, Jeremy Corbyn and Emmanuel Macron were on the up and Cameron should have clocked it.

Now Brexit is a reality we must make the best of it, but we are already applying the wrong remedies in negotiations.

Whitehall sources tell me Michel Barnier is bluffing, that he will park the divorce settlement of between £54billion and £100billion, and we’ll be on to a trade deal by Christmas.

MPs on the Commons Brexit Committee who met the EU’s chief negotiator are not so sure. They say he’s in no mood to give ground.

The right remedy for Theresa May is to put a firm offer on the table and then get on with the inevitable haggling.

But the PM has already shown her talent for looking for trouble by calling a disastrous snap election, finding it by coming up with a duff manifesto, diagnosing it incorrectly by still thinking she would win a landslide, and applying wrong remedies ever since. Forty of her MPs are now said to be ready to topple her, but that’s still eight short of the number needed to trigger a contest – so she’s still in with a chance. But if she doesn’t get Brexit right there’ll be no more of the chauffeur-driven limo.

And her new transport arrangements will give her ample opportunity to read London Underground witticisms.