A promising start in these testing times

THERESA MAY’S new Government is flexing muscles that have long been unused. It will be an alarming feeling at first, but Government and people will quickly get used to being a sovereign nation again.

A good example of this new attitude is Brexit Minister David Davis, who reveals in a Mail on Sunday interview today that he is already considering how to deal with a possible surge of new EU migrants before the UK leaves.

While determined to be civilised, and to treat existing migrants with generosity, Mr Davis warns that if we feel our hospitality is being exploited by new arrivals, we have the will and the power to act.

Mr Davis’s adventurous appointment is itself a sign of a thoughtful, broad-minded boldness and confirmation which shows that this newspaper was right to endorse Mrs May from the start.

It is all part of a new mood in British politics, since the swift, orderly uprising which ended the Cameron era. It is hard to think of any other nation or people who could have coped so calmly with such an upheaval, without rancour or violence.

But we face a stern test. David Cameron’s Government confronted major economic problems, which were quite hard enough to solve.

But Mrs May must govern a country torn down the middle, in which one half of the nation seeks reassurance that there will not be too much change, and the other is afraid there will be too little.

And she must also cope with what could still be a great existential crisis, a kingdom disunited by the competing desires of its component nations. She will need to be both resolute and skilful to resolve this.

The tone of toughness mingled with diplomacy set by Mrs May on a highly significant visit to Scotland was a good sign that the new premier has quickly got the measure of her momentous tasks.

There she simultaneously assured First Minister Nicola Sturgeon that the concerns of Scottish people will be listened to, and made it plain beyond doubt that she intends to preserve the Union. All the signs so far are good. Let us hope that Mrs May continues as she has begun.