Don’t waste your energy feeling sorry for Theresa May
THE season of goodwill is upon us and this year I have vowed to strive for serenity. I’m doing pretty well on the domestic front. I didn’t, for example, shout and swear as I watched a stranger casually fill my recycling bin with his landfill waste. Instead, I simply cleaned up the bins without complaint, much to my husband’s amazement.
My new found zen does not extend to politics, however, especially after the last week’s disgraceful Brexit developments, following which I’m failing miserably to keep calm and carry on. And despite what I’ve just said about goodwill, I have not one iota of sympathy for Theresa May and her current predicament.
It’s interesting, isn’t it, how this narrative around feeling sorry for the Prime Minister has sprung up? The “poor Theresa” mantra reached a full head of steam last week, of course, as the extreme Brexiters in her party finally moved in for the kill with their vote of no confidence, after stalking her for months.
In the media coverage during the build-up to Wednesday’s vote, and in the tone of the reaction to her victory, I was struck by the number of folk who went on and on – and on – about how sorry they felt for Mrs May.
It’s become clear large sections of the public have become increasingly, indeed worryingly, impressed by the Prime Minister’s handling of the Brexit debacle, seeming to view the blank look on her face as a comforting, praiseworthy signal to us, the plebs, that she knows what she’s doing.
I’m not fooled for a minute and neither should you be. Mrs May’s features are blank not because she’s brave, but because she lacks either the courage or the will to change course and save the country from the catastrophe we all face.
To be clear, this Remain-voting PM is either stupid enough to try and go ahead with a policy that even her own Government says will be massively damaging to the people of this country, or too cowardly to stop it. Which of these chilling realities is worse?
Like the robot she jokingly impersonated a few months ago at the Conservative Party conference, the Maybot keeps going through the motions of the disastrous, unsupportable deal she has cobbled together. But that joke isn’t funny anymore, especially as Mrs May must bear much of the responsibility for the impossible situation she has found herself in over the last weeks and months.
Make no mistake, this is not only a perfect storm but also a crisis of her own making. It was the PM, after all, who came up with the ill-conceived and wrong-headed red lines of the deal without consulting Parliament or even trying to build consensus and bring MPS with her. She has ignored the Scottish Parliament’s objections and resisted every attempt at Westminster to give MPS a say in the process.
Mrs May is not a person any of us, the poor so-and-sos who will suffer economically, socially and culturally if she goes through with this folly, should feel sympathy for.
At this crucial point I believe we should extend the hand of
Christmas friendship to another divisive figure, however: Tony Blair.
The former PM has been embracing the sort of leadership and pragmatism Mrs May continues to reject by quietly chinning EU leaders behind the scenes, trying to hammer out a solution to the terrible situation we all find ourselves in. And, since he’s intelligent and sane as well as extremely well connected, Mr Blair has come up with a sensible and cogent way forward. The catch is, of course, it would require the sort of leap of imagination the current PM seems incapable of.
Instead of trying to keep flogging her dead horse, Mrs May should, according to her predecessor, become a facilitator. If no consensus can be found in Parliament, he justifiably backs a public vote to determine whether Brexit should go ahead.
Crucially, he also says the EU should – and would – make concessions on some of the issues that led to Brexit in the first place, such as free movement, thus allowing some EU doubters to come back into the fold and vote to cancel Brexit. Being seen to listen to concerns over immigration, to offer some flexibility to nation states, would surely be welcomed more widely across the EU, too.
Showing uncharacteristic emotion, perhaps sensing he’s on to something, Mrs May has angrily accused Mr Blair of undermining her talks. Predictably, the Corbyn faithful has also blown a gasket at his intervention; Labour’s former leader remains the anti-christ in their eyes because of his decision to involve Britain in the Iraq war.
To put it bluntly, the whole lot of them need to move on, Labour from Iraq and the Tories from their calamitous belief that Brexit can and should happen. Lest we forget Mr Blair, though undoubtedly flawed, was the last politician able to gain the broad support of most people in Britain, regardless of their background or ideology.
He’s the sort of pragmatic centrist the country is crying out for right now, and over the festive season I’ll be praying Mrs May has a Christmas epiphany and follows his lead.
Lest we forget Mr Blair, though undoubtedly flawed, was the last politician able to gain the broad support of most people in Britain