Opinion

Brian Feeney: Theresa May must be replaced by someone who can get cross-party cooperation on Brexit

Brian Feeney

Brian Feeney

Historian and political commentator Brian Feeney has been a columnist with The Irish News for three decades. He is a former SDLP councillor in Belfast and co-author of the award-winning book Lost Lives

Prime Minister Theresa May during Prime Minister's Questions in the House of Commons, London on Wednesday. Picture by Mark Duffy, UK Parliament, Press Association
Prime Minister Theresa May during Prime Minister's Questions in the House of Commons, London on Wednesday. Picture by Mark Duffy, UK Parliament, Press Association Prime Minister Theresa May during Prime Minister's Questions in the House of Commons, London on Wednesday. Picture by Mark Duffy, UK Parliament, Press Association

Yesterday Dominic Grieve tabled two bills at Westminster to prepare for a second referendum and to carry out the vote.

Theresa May’s government won’t support the bills of course, but Grieve’s move is likely to be one of a series of bills tabled by groups of MPs so that people can see which proposal is most likely to obtain a majority.

The trouble with this process is that time slips by while it’s happening and we move ever closer to crashing out of the EU with no deal by accident.

All the indications are that, incredibly, Theresa May will return to the Commons on January 21 with a so-called Plan B which will look remarkably like the deal which was destroyed in the unprecedented 432-202 vote on Tuesday night. MPs have until January 30 to vote on whatever she presents next Monday; they’ll reject it. The Labour party will propose another vote of no confidence. They’ll lose. The clock ticks inexorably on towards March 29.

All that fossicking around will only demonstrate that by February May has nothing she can take to Brussels that she can get through Parliament so there would be no point in the EU agreeing to any proposal she makes.

The only way she can make progress is to reach out to the leaders of the other parties and try to reach a consensus on some arrangement they can persuade their parties to support. However, apart from meeting Nicola Sturgeon she’s not doing that because he won’t talk to Jeremy Corbyn who wants a customs union or Vince Cable who wants a referendum. Instead she’s closeted with the DUP asking what they would agree to. Answer: nothing.

May is temperamentally unsuited to reaching consensus. She is rigid, robotic and stubborn. She will not abandon her ‘red lines’ which got her into this fix in the first place. The bottom line is that since she insists on leaving the customs union and single market, as she repeated yesterday, there has to be a backstop. You can’t leave the customs union and single market and have an open British border in Ireland. May herself accepts that, so the north has to follow EU customs and market regulations. Four times she has agreed this point formally with the EU.

A referendum doesn’t solve this conundrum. Why any northern nationalist should advocate another referendum is astonishing. Yes, it would postpone a decision into next year but why would anyone here want to be trapped in an English political civil war, have no control over the question or questions, and once again be ignored when the decision, which would again be to leave, is taken? More negotiations would follow and the row about the backstop would be repeated. Groundhog day, except that rancour and polarisation caused by a nasty campaign would be far worse than now.

The only hope is that after a couple of weeks when May’s Plan B is defeated the men in grey suits will tell her it’s time to go because, on a scale of one to ten in leadership, where ten is best, she scores one. Failing a general election which is too much to hope for, the only chance for progress is a prime minister who is capable to cooperating with other party leaders and doesn’t insist on behaving as if she has a majority.

May has never accepted that after falling on her face in the June 2017 election she has a mandate for nothing and cannot push through controversial policies without bringing other parties along with her. Tuesday night showed that relying on the DUP alone is the road to nowhere.