Has Theresa broken the wicked Brexit witches’ spell?
WHISPER it. Especially if you’ r e in t he vicinity of Jacob Rees-Mogg, Nigel Farage or Boris Johnson, (unless, in the latter case, you are safely disguised as part of the postal system or Ronnie Biggs). But Theresa May’s Chequers strategy is starting to work.
As ever, this does not fit the popular Westminster narrative. We are meant to believe Mrs May’s premiership is imploding in an orgy of Tory in- fighting, as an enraged nation reacts in fury to her heinous Brexit betrayal. That her granddesign lies in ruins, rejected out of hand by the callous and conniving EU bureaucrats.
But once again, British politics is refusing to follow the script. The British people are proving stubbornly independent. And there are even signs the member states of the EU are finally realising that if they want to avoid a cliff-edge, nodeal, UK departure, they are going to have to start to respond to the PM’s pragmatism with some hardheaded realism of their own.
First, those pesky scamps – the British people. We were confidently told by the Kamikaze Brexiteers they had their finger on the nation’s pulse. And that even if they didn’t, they would soon get that pulse racing with a furious, red-blooded denunciation of Mrs May’s perfidy.
Initially, their strategy seemed to be working. Tory poll ratings dipped. Ukip’s ticked up. But then the heatwave arrived, Harry Kane grabbed the winner against Tunisia, the country partied and the Brexit backlash dissipated. The most recent poll shows the Tories opening up a four-point lead over Labour, with Mrs May securing a double-digit lead over Jeremy Corbyn in assessments of who would make the better Prime Minister.
The normal caveats on polls obviously apply. Corbyn and his party are still mired in their anti-Semitic swamp. But this is not the way the Kamikaze Brexiteers expected things to play out. A collapse in Tory support and dramatic Ukip surge was by now meant to be providing the impetus for a summer of discontent, followed by an all-out leadership challenge in the autumn.
Yet where a storm was supposed to be raging, we have instead had a period of sultry dead-calm.
A major reason for this is that one of the biggest gambles of Mrs May’s political life is currently paying off. She and her aides calculated that the Chequers deal would stretch internal Tory unity to breaking point, but not beyond it. They knew there would be an angry backlash, probably accompanied by Cabinet resignations. But they also thought the fallout would be containable. It has been. Just.
One Brexiteer Minister who was personally on t he edge about whether or not to back the deal – but now believes they made the right decision – pointed me back to what they say was the defining moment of the Chequers weekend.
During the formal Cabinet section of the meeting, Liam Fox made a pointed intervention. Was what the Prime Minister proposed her preferred end state, a red line or an opening gambit in negotiations, he asked? Her response – that while there would obviously be a process of ongoing negotiation, the concessions being offered to jump-start talks represented her final major offer – swung the moment.
‘Where we [Cabinet Brexiteers] are now, is where the party is,’ a Cabinet Minister explained to me. ‘No one likes this deal. It’s not their perfect vision of Brexit. But so long as there’s no more back-sliding, people will just about live with it.’
Downing Street officials concur. ‘The party is basically now divided into two camps. There are those who hate Chequers, and will keep fighting it. But there’s a much larger group of people who are saying to us, “OK, we’ll accept this, but no further.” ’
This represents a second major area of miscalculation by Mrs May’s hard-Brexit opponents. By attacking Chequers head-on, they over-extended themselves. It’s why the critical mass of 48 pre-recess signatures – the number of Tory MPs needed to trigger a no confidence vote – proved elusive, and the vaunted campaign of rolling daily ministerial resignations failed to materialise. Mrs May was swaying precariously, but the tipping point had not quite been reached.
It’s also why Downing Street is bracing itself for a change of tactics. Although there has been some talk of a challenge to the Prime Minister in advance of October’s crucial EU summit, No 10 officials now believe the plan is to use that summit to prepare an ambush.
Having failed to derail Chequers, the malcontents will await the European Council meeting, seize on any subsequent communiqué, and proclaim it a second Munich.
But again, Mrs May is quietly confident she’ll negate this attack. One reason is that there is growing frustration among Cabinet ‘innies’ – the pro-Brexit Ministers who volunteered for the difficult, dangerous job of riding shotgun for Chequers – at the antics of the ‘ outies’, those ex- Ministers who are seen to be consistently trashtalking the negotiations.
THIS is especially true of recent attempts to frame preparations for a No-Deal Brexit as ‘ Project Fear 2.0’, something that is seen to be undermining sensible and necessary contingency planning across just every about Whitehall department.
As one senior pro-Brexit Minister acknowledges: ‘Was Government too slow to prepare for a No-Deal scenario. Yes. But is this all antiBrexit propaganda? No. In a NoDeal scenario, people won’t be starving to death. But there will be job losses. All this Churchillian rhetoric is great. But what people need to remember is the voters said to Churchill, “Thanks for winning the war for us, but now we want Labour to see us through what comes next.” ’
Mrs May is also bolstered by the first clear signs Brussels is starting to edge towards her negotiating position. Again, the hard-Brexiteers confidently predicted her Chequers offer would be rejected out of hand. As, to be fair, did most Remainers.
But on Thursday it emerged the EU is now considering dropping its pre- condition on continued free movement in return for a deal.
This was predictably dismissed as a ‘trap’ by the Cassandra-like Jacob Rees- Mogg. But it represents a potentially major concession by the member states, as well as providing the first clear chink of light between them and chief-negotiator Michel Barnier. It also underlines that the Prime Minister’s recent round of diplomacy – talks with French President Emmanuel Macron and Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte – represents more than a busman’s tour of the Continent.
Publicly the Kamikaze Brexiteers continue their Wicked Witch of the West tribute act, darkly warning Mrs May: ‘We’ll get you, my pretty!’ But privately, they’re aware their post- Chequers offensive is not quite going to plan. Indeed, some Tory insiders believe Boris Johnson’s burka intervention was a tacit acknowledgment that anti- May sentiment was providing insufficient traction to his leadership bid.
Boris and his allies have been making all the noise. But the dog days of 2018 could yet belong to Mrs May.
MARGARET BECKETT famously apologised in graphically honest terms for her fateful 2015 decision to nominate Jeremy Corbyn for the Labour leadership. ‘I am a moron,’ she admitted, after it became clear he was heading for victory. But that moment of contrition appears to have been short-lived. Who appears on the list of speakers for ‘Derby Transformed’, a ‘festival of ideas’ organised and promoted by Corbyn cheerleader Chris Williamson, self-confessed Communist Ash Sarkar, and Corbynite propaganda station Novara Media? Yes, one Margaret Beckett. Some people never learn.