Theresa May called this British general election on the specious grounds that she needed a strong mandate for her negotiating position on Brexit because the Opposition was frustrating her plans and, wait for it, determined to oppose them.
Instantly her chief ally in the newspaper business, the editor of the Daily Mail, jumped to her assistance with a full page photo of her and the headline ‘Crush the Saboteurs’. Apparently in her book the Opposition isn’t supposed to oppose.
They’re just supposed to let her ‘get on with the job.’
Now a month into the election campaign her negotiating position is just as muddled and obscure as it was when she became prime minister.
It’s not helped by manifest confusion and shocking ignorance among what she insists on calling ‘her team’.
John Crace the Guardian’s parliamentary sketch writer calls her the ‘Maybot’ because her vocabulary is restricted to robotic, meaningless phrases, like ‘strong and stable’ and in the case of Ireland, ‘no return to the borders of the past’.
She exhibits no imagination, no vision of what Britain’s future will be. No wonder she teamed up with Arlene Foster at the Balmoral Show. How appropriate.
Meanwhile her curiously titled Secretary of State for Exiting the EU, David Davis was, not for the first time. displaying his inadequacy for the job and his complete lack of understanding of the task in front of him.
Last October he had to be reminded that the Republic is an independent state, not a good start to discussing the border.
Until about Christmas Davis used to believe Britain could strike a trade deal with Germany on cars and France on wine until his tiny particle of knowledge about the EU was expanded by the news that because the EU negotiates trade deals as a body neither Germany nor France nor anywhere else would be doing individual deals.
However there’s a long way to go in Davis’s journey to understanding. In an interview at the weekend it was obvious he still doesn’t realise that Britain is a supplicant, asking for a deal for when it leaves the EU rather than dictating terms to the EU.
He still lives in the fantasy world that Britain can negotiate a trade deal alongside the terms of departure despite the clear directives given to Michel Barnier by the other 27 countries that the rights of EU citizens, Britain’s debts to the EU and the Irish border are the priorities BEFORE any talk of trade.
Secondly Davis either ignores, doesn’t know or doesn’t want to hear that a trade deal with the EU will take years AFTER Britain leaves in 2019.
The trade deal with Canada took seven years, the deal with Switzerland fourteen years and that with Japan fifteen years. When Britain’s EU expert Sir Ivan Rogers told May ten years he was soon gone from his job.
There’s another problem, quite a big one.
Theresa May drones on about her being a great negotiator though in fact she has no experience of anything near the immensity of dealing with the EU. Furthermore, as far as we know she takes pride in being obdurate.
The snag is she won’t be negotiating at all. The EU won’t accept her.
They will deal only with another professional trade negotiator. She thought it would be government to government but there are 27 governments and they have already turned down her suggestion of four days a month. For Barnier it’s a full-time professional job.
Equally her confused front man Davis won’t be negotiating either. A pity you might think since all the indications are he’d make a right pig’s ass of it.
Now what happens when the two officials responsible for negotiating Britain’s departure, Sir Tim Barrow and Oliver Robbins, permanent secretary at Davis’s department come back with what they agree with Barnier? Will it have to be ratified by the Maybot’s inner clique?
Will Davis be included or overruled? Will Barrow and Robbins be allowed to agree anything? Or will they be treated like Barrow’s predecessor Sir Ivan Rogers if they tell May she’s talking unobtainable nonsense?
You may have noticed in this election campaign that May’s Brexit supporters here, the DUP, have gone quiet about Brexit’s opportunities.
