Opinion

Alex Kane: Theresa May's stupidity has created the Brexit mess and I'll be glad to see her go

Alex Kane

Alex Kane

Alex Kane is an Irish News columnist and political commentator and a former director of communications for the Ulster Unionist Party.

Theresa May looks set to oversee a disastrous European election for the Tories. Picture by House of Commons/PA Wire
Theresa May looks set to oversee a disastrous European election for the Tories. Picture by House of Commons/PA Wire Theresa May looks set to oversee a disastrous European election for the Tories. Picture by House of Commons/PA Wire

In April 2015 David Cameron launched the Conservative Party's general election manifesto. His priority was to free himself from the shackles of the coalition with the Lib-Dems and Nick Clegg and form a Conservative-only government.

The best way of doing that, according to his advisers, was to get Nigel Farage off his back.

UKIP had done very well at the 2014 Euro elections, beating the Conservatives in seats and votes.

So Cameron decided to offer a referendum on EU membership and made it the policy cornerstone of the election. The plan didn't work as well as he had hoped. He did win a majority, but nowhere near big enough to face down his hard line Eurosceptics in Parliament and risk reneging on the referendum promise.

The rest you know.

Theresa May tried the same sort of reckless gambit on Tuesday afternoon, when she announced her plans to bring forward her Withdrawal Agreement - albeit with ten new proposals - for a fourth vote.

Basically she was trying to tell Conservative voters and others that the best way of getting a Brexit deal through was to make sure the party didn't crash and burn on Thursday. A catastrophic result would, she thinks (although didn't actually say it) embolden those who want a general election; as well as making it much more difficult to deliver Brexit in any form.

In one way she does have a point. Nigel Farage's Brexit Party can do enormous damage to the Conservative Party; but unless he can get the party into the House of Commons as a significant voting bloc then there isn't, in fact, very much he can do to deliver Brexit.

She may also believe that a general election following a disastrous Euro result - a result which would probably panic and then swing the Conservatives to the Eurosceptic right and much closer to the Brexit Party - might actually deliver huge gains for the Labour, Lib-Dems and SNP: and, in so doing, kill off Brexit in any meaningful form.

Yet this is all a mess of her own creation. She will be remembered for 'Brexit means Brexit', the most stupid soundbite in recent history. She never explained what it meant; and I've never been convinced that she ever knew what it meant. So people made up their own definitions.

Worse, she never set out a coherent, attractive vision of a post-EU United Kingdom. All she ever did was mumble a variation of "we must deliver what the people voted for," but without giving specific shape and substance of what that was.

Yes, a majority voted Leave and she was bound by David Cameron's pre-referendum commitment to implement the outcome; but she never sat down with her own party, let alone anyone else, to discuss a pre-EU negotiation strategy and package.

So determined was she to accommodate all sides of the debate (which was always going to be impossible when nobody else had a viable alternative of their own) that she promised more and more which she knew she could not deliver.

The Withdrawal Agreement was a stunning example of her crassness: each time she brought it forward for a vote she changed it to win over people who had previously voted against it.

The Bill she intended to publish today but has now postponed has a whole raft of new commitments: some of which are nonsense; some which contradict previous commitments; some which breach the terms she has already agreed with the EU; some which she says she personally doesn't support (a possible second referendum); and some which is legislatively undeliverable.

It's her last throw of the dice: assuming, of course, she is still in office on Friday (I'm writing this on Wednesday).

I can't imagine it has any chance of success: indeed, it might go down to a larger defeat than last time.

I mentioned in this column a few weeks ago that it would probably take the political equivalent of an exorcism to remove her from Number 10 and it's beginning to look like the 1922 Committee has finally appointed a Witchfinder General and ordered in a few gallons of holy water.

They may hope she'll jump first - particularly if the party records its worst ever result on Thursday - but I wouldn't take bets on it.

Her stupidity has created this mess (so could we stop blaming the voters, please?).

Her stupidity has wedged open the door of Number 10 for that oafish narcissist Boris Johnson, as well as building the platform upon which the Brexit Party now stands. She was always her own worst enemy, mistaking barking-mad crankiness for stoicism, determination and duty.

I'll be delighted to see her leave office: and even more so if her departure also ends the cabinet career of the monumentally naff and tin-eared Karen Bradley.