‘Only Theresa May knows what she really wanted to achieve as PM’
IT IS impossible for an MP not to wonder how people will remember him or her after he or she is dead and gone.
Member’s Lobby, just outside the doors to the Commons chamber, resembles the marble burial chamber of an ancient dynasty.
Busts of the heads of Prime Ministers stare out at MPs as they rush in and out. The truly memorable PMs are immortalised with bronze statues – and superstitious politicos touch Churchill’s foot as they walk into the chamber.
Members might well wonder how they will make the cut when history delivers its verdict on their performance. Will their body be hewn out of marble or cast in bronze, or will just their head – or nothing at all – be on display for future generations?
Only Theresa May knows what she really wanted to achieve as PM. Whatever ambitions drove her to seek high office, negotiating Brexit will not have been one of them.
She was not a particularly passionate campaigner for continued EU membership during the referendum but Brexiteers need no reminding that she was in the Remain camp.
Nevertheless, there are worse things than going down in history as the PM who successfully took the UK out of the EU, avoided a recession and recast Britain’s identity on the world stage. As a first line in a political obituary, it is not bad.
But Mrs May now has reason to fear that she will be remembered not for steering the UK into a new chapter in its history but overseeing a “catastrophic split” in the party she has led since 2016.
Former Brexit Minister Steve Baker has a reputation for personal courtesy but he will have made spines shiver and foreheads redden with his warning that the Conservatives – the party of Disraeli, Churchill and Thatcher – could break apart if the PM sticks with her “Chequers” Brexit plan.
Yet it is hard to see how a scintilla of her personal credibility would remain intact if she torched her long-awaited vision for Britain’s relationship with the EU. It would send the signal to Brussels that there is little point negotiating with the PM and her ministers for they are beholden to the EU’s most ardent foes.
Such a surrender would be the type of humiliation that would prompt most leaders to dictate a resignation statement. But even if she did sit down with Mr Baker, Jacob Rees-Mogg and – this is almost impossible to imagine – Boris Johnson and David Davis and pledge to run with whatever deal they could agree on, this would not lift the country out of its crisis.
If the new proposals failed to get the endorsement of both the EU and MPs (and it boggles the imagination as to how a blueprint conceived by the eurosceptic wing of the Tory party could command such consensus) the UK would be staring at the prospect of a no-deal Brexit; this could trigger a collapse in investor confidence and Whitehall would scramble to put in place its contingency measures to prevent chaos.
A Prime Minister is in trouble when his or her MPs feel torn between loyalty to the party and their allegiance to their country. For the most committed Brexiteers, nothing less than the future of national sovereignty and parliamentary democracy is at stake, which makes it harder for whips to persuade them to water down their positions.
One of the key reasons why Mrs May made the disastrous decision to go for last year’s snap election was probably the hope she would win herself so gargantuan a majority that she would not have to worry about a eurosceptic rebellion. Today, she leads a minority government dependent on DUP support – and if she had to rely on Labour help as well to get the parliamentary stamp of approval for her deal this could inflict monumental damage on her party.
She already lives with the threat that her Tory critics may trigger a vote of no confidence. Anti-EU MPs would accuse her and her allies of nothing less than betrayal if, with Labour’s help, she bound the UK to a future where it trades in goods in compliance with the EU’s rulebook.
To make matters even more miserable for the PM, there is no guarantee that Labour would ride to the rescue. Its leadership would doubtless relish the spectacle of a Conservative Government collapsing, and a Corbyn-led Government then getting to negotiate Brexit.
Another election would be an invitation for a true Tory split. ArchBrexiteers could not stand in support of a manifesto that had the Chequers plan at its heart.
The scene would be set for Theresa May’s fiercest internal critics to strike electoral pacts with what remains of Ukip and champion a vision of Brexit likely to horrify big business. Mrs May’s incentive to avoid an election that could see the Tory vote split will be only heightened by her determination not to be remembered as the leader who paved the way for Prime Minister Corbyn.
She can aim to project an image of strong and stable leadership at the upcoming party conference in Birmingham and hope that she is not hit with another coughing fit, stage invasion or set collapse.
But even the most valiant speech in her defence by Michael Gove is unlikely to convince Brexiteers not to decry the Chequers plan every time they are within reach of a microphone.
It is against this context that the likes of former Conservative Defence Minister and Aberconwy MP Guto Bebb has come round to the idea of holding a referendum which would give the people of the UK the choice between backing the deal the PM can negotiate or the status quo.
This would be an extraordinary move by a PM who has repeatedly denounced the idea of another referendum, even more fervently than she stamped on suggestions she might go for an early election.
But if we reach the point where a thumping majority of MPs in all parties – plus the trade unions, business bodies and, crucially, the public – are united in calling for a public vote, perhaps the PM could consider it preferable to bow to pressure for another exercise in mass democracy than follow Brexiteer orders to put her Chequers plan in the shredder.