Only May can steer us safely through Brexit

IF NOBODY steers the ship of state, it will drift, perhaps into danger.

A failure by the Cabinet to agree on a clear policy for Brexit will not benefit either Remainers or Leavers. Both will suffer if Britain and its leaders cannot present a united front to the EU in the planned Brexit White Paper.

Outside the Cabinet, the public are both bored and impatient. Most normal citizens understand the need for compromise and want the whole thing to be over and done with. But inside the Cabinet, and in parts of Parliament, there is still far too much grandstanding and unwillingness to budge on contentious and complex issues that have been falsely inflated and oversimplified into non-negotiable principles.

In fact, by a subtle sideways process, the Prime Minister has already shifted the British position towards some sort of deal on the customs union and the single market. The urgent voice of business was heard last week, and made more of an impact on thoughtful people – and on policy – than the crude profanities of the Foreign Secretary.

There are now the possible outlines of a workable deal over future trade relations, even if it has to be presented as ‘temporary’ to keep alive the theoretical possibility that it will one day be replaced by a more radical plan. So Mrs May approaches Friday’s important Cabinet meeting at Chequers with more authority than she may seem to have. Matters are quietly and slowly going her way – the practical, reasonable, patient way which typifies her approach.

Utterly determined to deliver the Brexit which the electorate voted for, she has managed to swerve round her party’s militant Remainer faction, who have twice failed to unhorse her. As for the noisier Brexiteers, noise is what they have been best at. But those who indulge in histrionics, or in ostentatiously ripping up documents they do not like, are not showing strength. They are demonstrating weakness, and they know it.

Nobody should expect a crystal-clear outcome on Friday. Winners sometimes have to keep quiet about their triumphs, and losers have to be allowed to pretend to have won. But it is both possible and essential that Mrs May wins the day for common sense and pragmatism. Her authority comes from the referendum itself, and also from her supreme obligation, the preservation of this country’s safety and prosperity.

She has to look, day and night, into the abyss of chaos which would follow if she failed. Her Cabinet critics should ask themselves – and each other – whether they could face that responsibility with the steel which she has at her core. And they should honestly admit that they could not.