Philip Johnston:

Theresa May will make the most important speech of her life on Friday – and she needs to get a grip

Ihave been reading the Prime Minister’s speech on Europe given in one of the continent’s great Renaissance cities. Here is an extract. “Europe is not the creation of the Treaty of Rome. Nor is the European idea the property of any group or institution. We British are as much heirs to the legacy of European culture as any other nation. Our links to the rest of Europe, the continent of Europe, have been the dominant factor in our history.”

She goes on: “The European Community is one manifestation of European identity, but it is not the only one… Nearly 2,000 years of British involvement in Europe, cooperation with Europe and contribution to Europe, contribution which today is as valid and as strong as ever… We have fought and died for her freedom.”

You might have guessed by now that this is not an exclusive peek at what Theresa May will say in Florence on Friday, but what Margaret Thatcher did say in Bruges in 1988.

She went to Flanders to inveigh against the development of a European superstate, and a fat lot of good it did her. Two years later, after threatening to veto the single currency, she was out on her ear. Mrs May has chosen Florence for the most important speech of her life because the city is seen as the crucible of modern Western civilisation and emblematic of European creativity. It is also the home town of Niccolo Machiavelli, whose treatise The Prince examined the nature and exercise of power.

Machiavellian is now a pejorative term attached to slippery politicians; but his main concern was weak leadership. Public displays of indecision were anathema because they endangered the body politic and the state itself. What he could not abide were leaders who agonised and prevaricated.

The world has obviously moved on since Machiavelli’s time; and his morally dubious inference that the ends always justify the means has been tested to destruction by dictators down the ages. But there is still something in what he has to say about the importance of strong leadership. We need it now.

It is tempting to see the breakdown in Cabinet discipline over the UK’S position on Brexit solely as a function of prime ministerial weakness. Ken Clarke said Boris Johnson set out his 4,000word treatise on the country’s future in this newspaper on Saturday because he was exploiting Mrs May’s lack of grip.

In “normal circumstances” he would have been sacked, said the former chancellor, never known to shrink from speaking his mind. But these aren’t normal circumstances. At this critical juncture in the nation’s history, enforcing collective Cabinet responsibility is hard when ministers feel so strongly about the direction that Government policy should take.

There is now general agreement among ministers and Tory MPS that there needs to be an implementation or transition period of two years. During that time the UK will pay money over to the EU, both as a sign of good faith and to ensure some trading processes are not peremptorily curtailed. The EU is adamant that we should put cash on the table now; but that is unacceptable without a cast-iron guarantee that it will be matched by flexibility on trade and customs. We cannot pay simply to get into the next round of talks.

However, until the EU negotiators report back to the other 27 heads of government that “sufficient progress” has been made on the money, together with Ireland and citizenship rights, we can’t talk about trade. The word in Whitehall is that there is a less than 50 per cent chance of that happening at the summit in Brussels next month.

If it doesn’t, then the next opportunity is the EU council in December. Since the Government realistically needs a deal by next autumn to put to Parliament before the March 2019 departure date, that is pushing it.

But while a bespoke two-year deal now seems to be the Government’s public position (not that we have asked the EU yet), Mr Johnson appeared to smell a rat. He was worried that something presented as a temporary state of affairs would turn into a permanent arrangement and we would end up like Switzerland or Norway – not in the EU but in EFTA or the EEA, and for good. This was behind the Foreign Secretary’s intervention: the fear that this is the endgame being promoted by Philip Hammond and the Treasury, and he does not like it.

He may be right, though he was offered reassurances yesterday which may stop him resigning and precipitating a crisis for Mrs May. If he were to, of course, he would not be the first former MP for Henley with blond hair to walk out of the Cabinet of a woman prime minister. The fact is that whatever Boris and the millions who voted for Brexit would like to happen, such as a Canada-style trade deal, the general election changed everything by denying Mrs May both her parliamentary majority and her authority as prime minister. Even if she wanted to tell the EU to “go whistle”, she is no longer strong enough to make the threat.

In her Lancaster House speech in January she said that “no deal was better than a bad deal”. But crashing out is not an option now because there aren’t the votes in Parliament, which is to have the final say.

The argument that we are leaving in March 2019 come what may, because the Article 50 egg-timer will have run out of sand, ignores the fact that this is a completely untested procedure and anything can happen.

Legalism will be trumped by politics, as it always is in Europe. If the British Parliament votes to stay in the EEA, the EU is unlikely to say we can’t. It might, but then at least everyone will know who to blame.

The domestic political fallout would be considerable if transition became a settled state. Half in and half out, many Brexit voters will feel betrayed. But as Machiavelli also said, the strong leader has to focus on what can be achieved, not on an unrealisable ideal outcome.

Few would envy Mrs May her Florentine task – though, like her predecessor in Bruges, she has no need to apologise for Brexit, given our commitment to Europe in blood and treasure down the centuries.

She is not temperamentally inclined to confrontation, but needs to be clear about where we are going. Indecision must end. No speech would be better than a fudged speech.