May’s ‘reset’ hits trouble
BRITAIN: British Prime Minister Theresa May has attempted a ‘‘reset’’ for her government after last month’s election losses, but it has been undermined by confusion over Brexit policy and a health scandal dating back decades.
In a speech yesterday at the launch of a review of working practices, May reached out to other parties, urging them to work with her to ensure British workers were given fair pay and conditions, and saying ‘‘big decisions’’ needed to be made so Britain emerged from Brexit ‘‘stronger and better’’.
Her overture was immediately rebuffed, with the main opposition Labour Party saying that the prime minister’s record was ‘‘one of failing working people and workers’ rights’’.
Stripped of her majority, May has secured the backing of the 10 MPs from Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionists on key votes, including on Brexit. But to pass other items on her list, she needs to build a cross-party consensus.
Even as May spoke, her foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, was causing her trouble by telling MPs that the government wasn’t planning for the contingency of failing to broker a Brexit deal with the European Union. May has repeatedly said that ‘‘no deal is better than a bad deal’’.
‘‘There’s no plan for no deal because we’re going to get a great deal,’’ Johnson said.
May’s spokesman, James Slack, appeared to contradict Johnson a few minutes later when he told reporters that ‘‘contingency planning is taking place for a range of scenarios’’.
Answering questions in Parliament, Johnson also agreed with euroskeptic Tory MP Philip Hollobone, who suggested the foreign secretary should ‘‘make it clear to the EU that if it wants a penny piece more’’ from Britain as part of the Brexit settlement, ‘‘it can go whistle’’.
Johnson responded that ‘‘the sums that I have seen that they propose to demand from this country seem to me to be extortionate’’.
Later in the day, Brexit Secretary David Davis sought to dispel the impression that May was softening her stance on Brexit, telling the House of Lords EU Committee that ‘‘the major elements have not changed’’.
Meanwhile, much media attention was drawn away from the reset bid by the government’s announcement of an inquiry into transfusions of blood contaminated with HIV and hepatitis C that were given to thousands of people by the state-run National Health Service in the 1970s and 1980s.
Pressure from opposition parties for a probe had been growing, and the announcement came just hours before Parliament was due to debate the issue.
May said the treatment of thousands of haemophiliacs and others was an ‘‘appalling tragedy’’ that should not have happened.
Britain imported supplies of the clotting agent Factor VIII from the United States, some of which turned out to be infected. Much of the plasma used to make it came from donors such as prisoners in the US who had sold their blood. At least 2400 people died, and thousands more were exposed to hepatitis C and HIV.
May and Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, told the cabinet they had decided on a full investigation after years of pressure from campaigners.