What a display of political ineptitude Theresa May put on for the world yesterday. What an unprecedented display of political weakness for all to witness. In the process May threw all her cards face up on the table and exposed why she folded.
So desperate was she to get on to trade talks next week that she took an enormous risk revealing yet again her lack of political judgment. Had it never occurred to her that if she conceded special status for the north then Scotland and Wales would demand exactly the same? It certainly never occurred to her that London would also demand special status. Incredibly it obviously never occurred to her to ensure Cabinet approval yesterday morning before she agreed to ‘continuing regulatory alignment’.
Now she’s in a real fix. Next week is the deadline for gaining EU approval for entering Phase 2 the trade talks. How is she going to manage that when she has revealed she has no negotiating hand? No one believed Juncker when he lamely tried to give her a bit of a boost in his thirty second press statement yesterday saying she is ‘a tough negotiator’. Pull the other one.
On yesterday’s evidence two points are ‘clear’, the word she loves to repeat. First, the British have no proposal whatsoever which squares the circle that if they leave the customs union and single market which she announced prematurely in October 2016 a hard border in Ireland is a necessary consequence. Secondly she will not be able to agree with the EU proposals since the reaction to them in Britain was sheer horror. She will not be able to cobble together an alternative in the next couple of days: a mess.
What is extraordinary is that Theresa May was prepared to incur the wrath of her own Brextremists and unionist ultras like Owen Paterson yet caved in when someone handed her a note about the DUP statement. A moment’s thought would surely have made her realise that if the DUP voted against proceeding to trade talks next week they would have been overwhelmed in Westminster because Labour would have voted with the government. All she has to ask herself is whether in any later vote the DUP want Jeremy Corbyn as prime minister which Sunday’s Survation opinion poll suggests would happen if there’s an election.
As a result of May’s abject failure yesterday she has enormously strengthened the hand of the Johnsons and Goves in her party. The Cabinet which had her imprisoned will now clap her in irons and demand to control what she’s prepared to offer the EU to get into trade talks. It’s obvious that the creative ambiguity in EU documents will not be acceptable to her own right wing who think her planned concession yesterday was an underhand way of staying in the single market.
If it had worked and she had come back to Britain with a fait accompli it’s a moot point whether she could have survived. As it is, she is the political equivalent of a cushion, someone who bears the imprint of the person who last sat on her.
