Brexit poker... but who holds all the aces?
IHAVE never played poker. Never been a seller of used cars with clocked mileages. Nor have I ever asked children to choose which shell the pea was under for 50 pence a go. But if I ever find myself in the position where I need to do any of those things to put bread on the table, I will seek out Theresa May as my first customer, or perhaps ‘mark’, for these reasons.
In the past two years of Brexit negotiations, she has proved herself wanting when trying to bluff, smell a dud or, sometimes, follow what is happening in front of her nose.
Bluffing at cards means you pretend to have a decent hand when you don’t.
In Brexit terms, Mrs May pretends that the UK could exit the EU without a deal and prosper when we couldn’t. The country is wholly unprepared to face that fate at the current time, if it ever was a viable option.
One only has to point out that the preparations so far include the UK Transport Secretary hiring a ferry company without ferries whose contract terms were cut and pasted from those of a takeaway food company.
But can our Prime Minister spot someone she can do business with and someone she can’t?
WITH its most major economies, such as Germany, teetering on the very edge of recession, it is clearly not in the EU’s interests for the UK to leave without a deal. Its chief negotiator Michel Barnier has expressed his regret at the idea of the UK leaving the EU – but has nonetheless sat down with Mrs May and cut a deal.
It did not please everyone. For example, the French are furious about concessions given to Britain on fishing – and the Spanish are less than satisfied with the status of Gibraltar post-Brexit.
Mr Barnier did, however, appear to please the Prime Minister by accepting the UK’s idea of a backstop in Northern Ireland to avoid a hard border with the Republic of Ireland.
Yet is it he who is not to be trusted after Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg effectively whipped his hard line Brexiteers to vote Mrs May’s deal down. Barnier or Rees-Mogg? Which one to trust?
Leaving aside that Mr ReesMogg’s hedge fund advises its investors to move their money out of the UK, he also engineered a vote of no confidence in the Prime Minister that would have seen her sacked. Finished her for good.
Even though she won it, her victory was narrow enough to force her to say she would not take the Conservatives into another election – in leadership terms taking no deal off the table, which we know is a no-no in the PM’s book when it comes to Brexit talks.
Yet it is Rees-Mogg who is to be pleased, or at least appeased, while Barnier is the real enemy.
They do say in politics you should keep your friends close, but your enemies closer, – they don’t say you should let your enemies take the mick out of you while losing your friends.
Increasingly, the British public, whether they voted remain or leave, just want a deal done. But whether leave is a good idea or a bad one, this surely is not the way to do it.
The Prime Minister seems unable to harness public opinion or even notice the way it is blowing to get herself out of the increasingly re-inforced Westminster bubble.
Yes, she can take comfort that pollsters find her a more popular choice for PM than Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn – but then again, they haven’t yet started putting Frank Spencer in their surveys.
Instead – with fewer than six weeks until Mrs May’s self-imposed deadline to leave the EU – we are asked to put our faith in baseless caricatures. The Europeans, we are told, always blink first and give concessions at the last minute. Presumably that advice comes from the same briefing that suggests Frenchmen smell of garlic and wear striped tops and berets as they cycle around the countryside with onions round their necks.
For a long time, it looked like Mrs May was stoically playing a long game. Now it seems she may have just been frozen in the headlights.
THIS weekend, senior members of the Cabinet on both sides of the European argument have no idea what the Prime Minister is going to do next. It is difficult not to conclude that is because she has little idea what to do next. She is not going to be allowed to run the clock down as she had hoped, although some of her backbenchers who voted down her original deal are desperately looking for any form of words, any fig leaf from Brussels, that will allow them to support her rather than be seen as responsible for no deal.
Her Cabinet members are not just considering the country postBrexit, but the Conservative Party post-Mrs May – and many don’t want it in the hands of Jacob Rees-Mogg or Boris Johnson.
The time for waiting for Mrs May’s next move is coming to an end and her power is likely to wane even more sharply over the next few weeks – just when the country needs her to be at her strongest.
As families throughout this country will find out over the next few years, Brexit is not a game – but if it was, let’s hope it isn’t the case that our Prime Minister didn’t have the wit to work out how to play it.