Diplomatic May will soon have to show her authority
WHO really wants to solve the Brexit problem? The default mode is now mutually assured snarkiness. Remainers adopt a martyred “told-you-so” expression or indulge in regressive attempts to discredit the referendum, having lost it.
Brexiters are jumpy too. A summer of breezy triumph has shaded into an autumn of blame for currency distress. Too much Leaver energy goes into denouncing “bad losers” and relatively little into figuring out how the promised land of independence might work.
Theresa May’s Cabinet is fast becoming a microcosm of these twin tensions. One new member described the mood as the top team gathered yesterday as “like being at the polite end of a family gathering, while the rowdier cousins are brawling outside”.
The notion of time-limited dissent is a guide to May’s philosophy of government: namely, that it should contain multitudes, permit debate and then fall into line when a decision is taken at the top. So when is such a point reached on her dealings with Brexit?
To date, her approach has been to talk hard while acting softer. For one thing, she has signalled that exceptions will be the rule. So a powerful employer in the UK, Nissan, already has reassurances that it can continue production on the same terms as before June. A similar reassurance has been doled out to EU students: those starting courses next year will continue to pay the same fees as UK undergraduates.
Watch out too for what the PM does not say. She has a marked disinclination to back any proposal from pro-Brexit Cabinet colleagues on trade arrangement that would fail to guarantee access to most provisions of the single market. German sources describe her tone on this as courteous and cautious.
Within the bounds of a divided party and a divided country, May is doing her best. What she cannot do is satisfy the dreams of the less reality-adjusted Leavers nor the Freudian id of many Remainers, which simply wants Brexit to go away. That is why May stands her ground against the plaintive push for Parliament to “have a say” on Brexit: an apparently simple proposition that hides a cat’s cradle of objectives.
Many of those calling for a vote live in hope that the Commons will throw sand in the wheels of Brexit by staving off Article 50. Another group believes MPs should have the choice between hard and soft Brexit.
For all the bombast about the role of the legislature, the Prime Minister will ultimately be the driver of what happens. And that will be the test of her authority as head of a team of rivals. Her early instinct has been to command and control through micro-measures. So ministers have been surprised by how No 10 has stamped on proposed media appearances. “Think of it as the relationship between Moscow and a very semiautonomous Soviet republic,” quips one special adviser.
“Queen May” is not merely being autocratic. Privately, she jokes about still getting used to her power. When an aide remarked that she looked like a PM in a TV drama, she laughed that it sometimes seems strange to her too. For now, she need not care too much about Nicola Sturgeon’s jibe at being “in office, not in power”: no competitor looks likely for the foreseeable future.
The bigger risk is trying to approach the cathartic political moment of Exit day next March merely as the balancer of warring forces. Her party and the rest of us will soon need to know where her centre of gravity lies on Europe.
In the absence of easy solutions to the conundrum of Brexit, a sense of what criteria matter most to the woman in charge of delivering it would be a start. HOW are we feeling about the autumn crop of TV dramas? Let’s start with the Michael Crichton adaptation, Westworld. Like about half of all telly drama output nowadays, it’s “set in the near future”, in this case an amusement park populated completely by synthetic androids who are there purely to satisfy every choosy whim of human visitors. Some think this is a dystopian fantasy. The rest of us know that is what it feels like to be the parent of a teenager at half term.
For more escapist plotlines, let’s turn to Divorce, with Sarah Jessica Parker undergoing a vicious marital break-up, albeit still with fabulouslooking hair. But the moment that produces a shudder of recognition is when she finds herself locked out for adulterous misconduct — and assumes she has, as usual, forgotten her front-door key. We’ve all been there. The key part, I mean.