Brexit: Resigning on day the UK leaves the EU will strengthen May

Theresa May should resign on the day Britain leaves the EU. Picture: AFP.

After an interminable preamble, the last chapter of Brexit is almost upon us. Until the negotiation is finally over, every public utterance is for show; the gap between what is said in public and what is said in private has never been greater. The latest ruse appears to be that Tory Brexiteers have pledged to support the prime minister in return for a promise of her resignation. It is hardly likely such a conversation ever took place, yet Mrs May ought to be suggesting it herself. Her only sensible course soon will be to stand down and there is profit for her in conceding it.

In unguarded moments the prime minister must crave a release from her unruly rabble of a party. It is repeated with wearisome frequency that Mrs May is weak, and so she is. But the inference is almost always wrong. Mrs May’s weakness is not primarily a property of her character. It is primarily a property of the weak political situation she finds herself in. To only some extent is that situation of her own making. There is no deal available from the EU 27 that would magically combine the antithetical desires of Tory Brexiteers, the House of Commons and whatever construction you wish to place on the referendum expression of the British electorate.

Mrs May is not weak because she has been unable to answer the Irish question. She is weak because the Irish question is not answerable. Anything achievable was not especially desirable and anything desirable was not achievable. Mrs May could have the heart and stomach of a king, like Elizabeth I, and she would still be weak and feeble. The prime minister’s reticence and lack of imagination complicates the issue and permits people to pretend that her character is the problem. The truth is that another prime minister would have just found a more vivid and interesting way to expose the essential contradictions of Brexit.

She has been accused of running down the clock but everyone else is doing the same. The tactic of the second referendum crowd has been to be the last option remaining. They are expressly (and, given their aim, rightly) running down the clock. This is what happens in negotiations. Silence is a weapon and better offers are made when the pressure of time is acute. Indeed Mrs May’s error has been to hint that she might conceivably bring her deal back for a third time after the European summit of March 21 and 22. The moment recalcitrant MPs get a sniff that Tuesday’s vote is not final they will cease to believe it really counts. Mrs May should have said that this is it. No more chances. It will take that kind of clarity to shake some of them from their foolery.

If you have no sympathy at all for Mrs May’s predicament just pause a moment to consider some of the buffoons she has to contend with. Take a moment to read Sunday’s article by the brains of the [pro-Brexit] European Research Group, Steve Baker, and the Democratic Unionist Party’s head of complaints, Nigel Dodds. Under a joint byline that doubles the discredit, Baker and Dodds write that a delay to Brexit would do “incalculable” harm to public trust in British politics. Which invites the rejoinder that they could just vote for Mrs May’s deal, if the stakes are that high.

Yet our philosopher-kings are not done yet. A delay would mean, they conclude, that “democracy would be effectively dead”. If the vote falls because they, two Brexiteers, fail to vote for it, then democracy will be cancelled. A century of franchise extension, beginning in 1832 and running through 1867, 1884, 1918 and culminating in the full democratic ballot of 1928 will be cancelled. The long history of peaceful transfers of democratic power after general elections will be over.

Mr Baker and Mr Dodds have performed an important service here. We all knew that Brexit was important but, clearly, some trifling dispute about the Irish border pales in comparison with the loss of democracy itself. We have no Churchill on hand but thank heaven for Mr Baker and Mr Dodds. Fully apprised of the gravity of the situation they will, I am sure, ride to our rescue and lay aside their own reservations about the deal for the cause of saving British democracy.

Mrs May is in the unhappy position of having to nod politely while listening to this sort of guff. If I were her I’d be inclined to resign, although not entirely out of desperation. The reason for that is not to help the deal pass, though it might have that incidental benefit. The reason to resign is that she will last longer as prime minister if she says she is leaving than she will if she pretends she is staying.

Mrs May could fall during this process. Throughout her tenure she has been weak but stable. One day, though, the trick will fail and she will fall over. But if the Bakers and the Dodds complete their heroic work of saving Britain from tyranny, bondage and servitude, Mrs May will be within her rights to demand that her party should extend her some credit. The euphoria of an official departure from the European Union will not last. It will not be long before the tensions in any bodged compromise start to unravel. As soon as they do, Tory MPs will start to demand that Mrs May leave the scene. With every day of her premiership after Brexit the day of her departure will draw one day nearer.

That is why she ought to have her resignation speech written, to be delivered on the day Britain leaves the EU. If we leave on March 29, she should say, “I will leave on March 29, 2020.” If June, then June and so on. A year’s grace would begin an orderly audition for her successor and allow plenty of time for that person to bed in before the mandatory general election in 2022. In the year she has left Mrs May could set herself one big problem — social care, for example — and fix it.

Brexit desperately needs the adjusting mechanism that the attorney-general Geoffrey Cox has been seeking in Brussels. It is not only the Irish backstop that needs adjusting, it is the expectations of all those (which is everyone) who dealt in vast exaggerations of the costs and benefits of this process. Just when it looked as if compromise was in the air, the Baker-Dodds fraternity have started to sound uncompromising again. The biggest week in politics since the last biggest week in politics is about to start. If our heroes do not come to the rescue, it will seem like an eternity. Mrs May can help them by pledging that before long she too, like the rest of us, will have had enough.

The Times