May tells Britain: let’s unite in 2017

PM quotes murdered MP Jo Cox as she urges Britons to come together and promises best Brexit deal

BRITONS must unite after their “divisive” decision to leave the European Union, Theresa May has said, as she pledged to use the next 12 months to see the UK gets the best Brexit deal.

The Prime Minister quoted the murdered Labour MP Jo Cox in her New Year’s Day message and called on Britons to come together irrespective of how they voted in June’s referendum.

She also promised that 2017 will be the year in which the UK starts the process of leaving the EU.

However, Mrs May’s comments were tempered by a tough New Year message from Angela Merkel in which the German Chancellor compared Brexit to a “deep incision” and warned that Britain would not face a “happy future” outside the EU.

Mrs Merkel said the EU would bear “deep cuts” from Britain leaving, adding: “We Germans should never deceive ourselves into thinking that a happy future could be achieved as a nation separately.”

She said that even though the EU was “slow and arduous”, its member states should focus on common interests that transcend national benefits.

In her message, Mrs May said: “I know that the referendum last June was divisive at times. But I know too that, as we face the opportunities ahead of us, our shared interests and ambitions can bring us together.”

Britain needed to come together, she said: “As the fantastic MP Jo Cox, who was so tragically taken from us last year, put it, ‘We are far more united and have far more in common than that which divides us’.”

The Prime Minister said the UK was positioned to seize the “great opportunities” ahead in 2017 as it formally starts the process of leaving the EU. She said: ‘As the MP Jo Cox, tragically taken from us, put it, we have far more in common than that which divides us’ “We have made a momentous decision and set ourselves on a new direction. And if 2016 was the year you voted for that change, this is the year we start to make it happen.”

Mrs May said she wanted to see a Britain in which “we are no longer the 52 per cent who voted Leave and the 48 per cent who voted Remain, but one great union of people and nations with a proud history and a bright future.

“So, when I sit around the negotiating table in Europe this year, it will be with that in mind, the knowledge that I am there to get the right deal, not just for those who voted to leave but for every single person in this country.”

Mrs May’s call for unity was supported by the Archbishop of Canterbury the Most Rev Justin Welby, who said the EU referendum had left divisions which had to be reconciled.

Archbishop Welby said: “I know that if we look at our roots, our history and our culture in the Christian tradition, we will find a path towards reconciling the differences that have divided us.

“Living well together, despite our differences, offering hospitality to the stranger and those in exile with unshakable hope for the future – these are the gifts, the commands and the prom- ises of Jesus Christ. They are also the foundations of our best shared values, traditions and practices in Britain. They make us the country we can be: a gift and source of confidence to this troubled world, in which we live not only for ourselves, but as a beacon of hope, a city set on a hill.”

That came as Paul Nuttall, the new leader of the UK Independence Party, warned that the new year could bring even greater upheaval than the twin seismic events of the Brexit vote and the election of Donald Trump.

In his new year message, Mr Nuttall said: “Working-class communities in this country went out in their droves and voted for Brexit. The Rust Belt in the United States voted en masse for Donald Trump. If you think 2016 has been a year of upheaval, 2017 could be even bigger.”

Here is a tale of two New Year messages. Angela Merkel, who faces a tough re-election bid in 2017, talked in hers about the troubles facing Europe. Brexit, she said, had inflicted a deep wound upon the Continent. Theresa May, by contrast, was full of optimism. If 2016 was the year that Britain voted for change, she said, “this is the year we start to make it happen”.

We agree: the big question is “how”? We have absolutely no doubt that the British people made the right decision about the biggest question they faced in decades. Britain voted for selfgovernment in the EU referendum. It rejected so-called expert advice and embraced an alliance between ambition and common sense. And in the months that have followed, the news has almost entirely been bright. For instance, at least 35,000 new jobs have been pledged by global companies since June – in defiance of negative predictions.

Mrs May speaks now of bringing the country back together. We understand why. Most prime ministers want to be unifiers: it is rare for anyone to run for office pledging to tear the world apart. One Nation Conservatism has a noble history of reaching across class or regional divides to make an argument rooted in individual liberty and patriotism. Philosophically, this appears to be the tradition in which Mrs May most comfortably fits.

But choices have to be made. We understand that Mrs May cannot spell out her negotiating position on Brexit before she has begun talks – but she could make a clearer case for the kind of Britain that will result. To say that it will work for all is, again, something that every leader says. What will the detail be?

It must be a Britain that encourages free trade at a time when its benefits have been called into doubt, not least by the incoming president of the United States. Critics might ask how Leavers can be genuine free traders while simultaneously arguing for leaving the EU – an observation that misunderstands the nature of the EU. It is not a free-trade zone so much as a sclerotic protection bloc. Outside of it, Britain will be free to negotiate, with relative speed, profitable new deals with the rest of the world.

There is good news on that score, too. Mrs May and her Brexit team have been lining up constructive relations with Australasia, the Gulf states, Canada, South Korea, India and, crucially, America. In an era of rising nationalism and economic protectionism, Britain should be making the case for spreading wealth and democracy through capitalism.

That goes for at home as well as abroad. Jeremy Corbyn’s New Year message has implied that he accepts Brexit – a position he has yet to sell to his back benches – but wants it to trigger a return to Seventies-style socialism. That means more spending, higher taxes and union activism. Mrs May might be tempted, as part of her pitch to working-class voters in the coming Copeland by-election, to move with him to the Left. She should do the opposite.

Take the issue of union power. There is a strike taking place this holiday weekend on Southern rail, and it is due to resume on January 9. It amounts to economic vandalism: it is militant action that will damage Britain’s growth, not Brexit. The unions are fighting automation and trying to send a message to the Government that they, not employers, call the shots. The Government should reply with resolve: passengers will not be held to ransom by dinosaurs. If that necessitates legislation to curb the right to strike on critical infrastructure, then so be it.

And while Mrs May is absolutely right to suggest that Brexit will define the next 12 months, we sincerely hope this means that difficult choices about other matters will not be avoided. Those who care passionately about freedom of speech, for instance, want to see an end to the invidious Section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act.

And those who want a vastly improved NHS will not benefit from fine rhetoric about national unity. It means little to anyone wanting to see their GP, apparently waiting an average of 13 days, or those joining a long queue at A&E or someone unable to get into hospital at all due to bed blocking. One of the biggest future crises facing Britain is its shortage of social care.

The British people have made very difficult decisions before – the Brexit vote being the starkest example. It proved that they are willing to embrace the future and all the challenges that come with it. If Mrs May is direct and courageous, she will find that the British people respond positively to the case for change.

In that spirit, we wish our readers a very happy New Year – and a prosperous, peaceful 2017.

It must be a Britain that encourages free trade at a time when its benefits have been called into doubt, not least by Trump

Mrs May might be tempted, in a pitch to win working-class voters, to move to the Left. She should do the opposite