Stubborn May crippled by Brexit monster

It was entirely right that Britain’s Theresa May eventually had her leadership challenged. The only thing that was keeping her in office was the unbelievably precarious and uncertain nature of her government and her nation.

Her crisis is unique, and involves an astonishing degree of incompetence, but it is also repre­sentative of the wider crisis in Western politics, which is part — not to be too grand about it — of a malaise in Western civilisation.

Several elements of May’s dolour are common across many Western societies.

One is that the losing side in any big dispute never accepts the legitimacy of the other side’s victory. Another is the contempt of metropolitan elites for the democracy of the common people, which they see only as their ignorant prejudice. A third is the shocking loss of moral authority among all governments and most big institutions. The idea that no issue is ever resolved, even in the short term, is a debilitating feature of contemporary Western politics.

The British people have voted three times on Brexit. Once, in 2015, they rewarded David Cameron with a surprise parliamentary majority when he campaigned on a clear promise to hold an in-out, once-and-for-all referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU.

Then, in 2016, in the biggest vote for anything in British history, they voted 52-48 to leave — and this after a massive scare campaign in which every kind of doom was foretold if they voted that way.

Then at last year’s election the Conservatives and Labour both promised to honour the Brexit referendum and they won 82 per cent of the vote between them, whereas the pro-Remain, pro-EU Liberal Democrats got smashed.

Yet at no point have the British establishment or the career bur­eaucrats who run the EU ever accepted the legitimacy of the decision or even the fact of the decision.

May, a timid creature of the establishment, has come up with a deal that is Brexit in name only. In two years of feckless, obscure and utterly ineffective manoeuvring, she has managed to negotiate only the terms of the transition period, which is meant to be temporary but last for at least two years.

The actual long-term trading and political arrangements between Britain and the EU remain to be determined during the transition period.

One of the main reasons no one wants her deal is that to leave the transition arrangements, Britain has to have the agreement of the EU. Given that during the transition period Britain would observe almost all EU rules, charge EU tariffs and have disputes resolved by the European Court of Justice, there is no reason to believe the EU would ever let Britain move out of the transition arrangements.

So this element of the Brexit crisis reflects both the losing side of an argument never accepting the legitimacy of a decision that has gone against them, and it also reflects the elites’ frequent contempt for democracy.

May, though stubborn, seems to lack any serious policy conviction. There is no consensus on Brexit in Britain. The nation is deeply divided. Therefore a government must decide. It is a question on which it is impossible to fudge — Britain either is a member of the EU or not. Trying to be out but still in produces the kind of Frankenstein’s monster May has brought to the parliament. Her refusal then to actually put her deal to a vote by the House of Commons is not a shrewd repositioning but cowardice. There seems to be absolutely nothing May will finally die in a ditch over.

Britain still faces the same three Brexit choices as it did ever since May unveiled her ruinous Chequers surrender on what she wanted from a deal. Britain can either accept May’s deal or something like it, which seems extremely unlikely. Or it can leave the EU without a deal, which means trading with the EU on the terms and under the rules of the World Trade Organisation. Or, finally, it can change its mind altogether and stay inside the EU after all.

Although I would trust no one’s forecasts on this — least of all my own — it would seem that the no-deal Brexit or the no Brexit at all are about equally likely.

There would be some short-term economic damage in a no-deal Brexit but this is wildly overstated, so long as the British government has properly prepared for it. Owen Paterson, who voted Remain and is a former Conservative cabinet minister, offered a withering assessment when he put in his letter demanding a leadership contest to replace May. He wrote: “It was a mistake not to begin intense preparations for leaving on WTO terms the moment the result was delivered, approaching the negotiations with a stronger hand, positioned to walk away without a deal and consequently much more likely to secure a good one.”

May as Prime Minister has had no authority at all since her disastrous election performance last year. The worst consequence of this was that she left the negotiations on Brexit to the civil service and ultimately accepted its advice, which has led her to today’s disaster. The British civil service never wanted anything to do with Brexit and has a natural bias to keeping any disruption to a minimum. The people who have the moral and political authority to make decisions about national priorities are not the civil service but the government, the political leadership.

But a political leader without authority or courage is a desperate and dangerous beast. Throughout the West, as authority has leached away from politicians and governments, they have tried to conscript the authority of state institutions in their various causes. In the process they have tended to politicise at least the way these institutions are seen and actually diminish the institutional credibility the politicians are trying to draw on. Cameron as PM quite wrongly misused a number of government departments to predict economic Armageddon if the British voted Leave. That Armageddon didn’t come about and their institutional credibility declined as a consequence.

Now the government is, in my view quite improperly, using the Bank of England to forecast misery if there is a no-deal Brexit to bolster support for May’s doomed deal. The Brexiteers then hit back with a former governor of the Bank of England to say the opposite. Net result is a diminished Bank of England.

Above all, Britain (and all who wish her well) needs this issue to be sorted out straight away. The Brits needed someone who can do what May apparently couldn’t do — make a decision and stick by it.