I think there is an element of truth in both theories. Theresa May has many talents. Flexibility, imagination and an ability to understand the thinking of those with different ideas to her have never been top of the list. If you want dogged determination then she’s your woman. If you want a variety of different strategies planned out, the best one selected and a new strategy ready to put in place as soon as circumstances change then she isn’t the woman to call.
The far right’s main criticism of her is that she never really believed in Brexit and wasn’t determined enough to walk away from the table. She is accused of not threatening the EU sufficiently and letting them believe that we had a weak hand. The conviction is that she could have told them that she, and the UK’s money, were walking away from the table and then she would have got a better deal.
The problem is that there is only any point in making threats if you can actually carry them out. Any experienced negotiator will tell you that. Bluffing doesn’t work when the other player knows what is in your hand. It took about five minutes for the EU negotiators to work out that a no deal Brexit would be so harmful for the UK that no responsible PM would ever willingly go down a no deal route. Only a deeply irresponsible far right fantasist would have the brass faced cheek to pretend it would only cost us a few weeks mild chaos followed quickly and magically by the emergence of a wonderful new UK. Under the lovingly protective care of Donald Trump.
Even if full scale No Deal planning had commenced the day after the referendum there was never going to be any way to do it in practice without seriously harming farmers, shoppers, lorry drivers and businesses. No country can cut itself off from tariff free paperwork free imports and exports with its biggest market without damage.
So Theresa May was always negotiating at a huge disadvantage because she had been set up to fail by utterly unrealistic promises. Her disadvantage became even greater when it emerged that the EU negotiators were actually quite competent and that 27 countries would act as one united block for two whole years without the least sign of even the smallest split in their ranks. Whilst the Conservative & UKIP politicians who told us that Johnny Foreigner was a badly divided cowardly negotiator who would always capitulate at the last minute turned out to be the ones who were completely divided. Some of the UK politicians even seemed so very badly divided that at times they even seemed to be disagreeing with themselves between the start of one interview and the end of it. Something which also seemed to be official Labour Party strategy as they abandoned any attempt at arguing a principled case for internationalism and tried instead to present themselves as sincere leavers to UKIP voters in one sentence and as sincere Remainers to those who hate UKIP in the next.
But even if the two main parties had been united and clear they still couldn’t have made a success of Brexit because what they were asking for was logically impossible to achieve. The UK needs to trade with the EU and for that it wants no tariffs and no paperwork. But voters had been promised wonderful new trade deals and for that it had to sign up to new arrangements and introduce borders with the EU. There is no way to sign new trade deals and keep free trade with the EU. There is no way to have different customs duties to the rest of the EU and not have a border with Ireland.
This has meant that May only ever had one reliable strategy. Dither. Decide nothing. Play for time. Hope something turns up. Whereas Labour’s strategy was to do much the same. Dither. Dissemble. Hope that the Tories split and a chaos General Election propels Corbyn to power.
Put simply May was both trying to do something that no leader could possibly do and also going about it badly. The Brexit promises couldn’t be delivered and all she was capable of was wriggling like a fly stuck on a pin as the pain and the damage dug deeper into her.
She is now a completely finished politician. Who happens to be in charge of the nation. She is committed to doing in 6 months what she has failed to do in two and a half years. Labour are happy to have talks with her so long as it makes them look collaborative and wins them a few votes. They aren’t prepared to dig her out of her hole and lose their core base. So she can’t get any help from Labour. She has failed three times to get enough votes to squeeze her ‘Deal’ through. Because it isn’t a deal. It is an agreement to talk further that tells us absolutely nothing about the long term relationship between the EU and the UK. It is a bad deal that amounts to signing a blank cheque. On the strength of all this chaos and incompetence she now faces being savaged in local elections and then savaged again in EU elections. She has a cabinet of none of the talents and no loyalty that even leaks discussions with our security services.
Has any PM ever faced worse odds?
Because anything is possible is such a messy situation it is not impossible that the very bleakness of her situation will scare enough MPs to voting through her deal at the 4th time of asking. It is also possible that she will dither her way through the next six months and the UK will crash out of the EU either intentionally or accidentally. The one thing we can be almost certain of right now is that she’d be really unwise to call a General Election as she is almost certain to go down to a massive defeat.
So she has one realistic option left open to her. She could call some form of a second referendum. Never under-estimate the ability of a politician to believe their own propaganda and to be convinced that they have a special bond with the electorate. She could easily persuade herself of that and call a plebiscite if she thinks that is the only way she can survive. It is also entirely possible that Labour will solve its own problems the same way.
It therefore becomes really important to be clear about what kind of referendum would be acceptable. There is much talk of a “confirmatory” referendum. That is exactly what I fear May will go for. Vote My Deal or No Deal. She could get that past her party because both factions think they would win.
What is much less likely to get approved by her own MPs is the option of putting No Brexit back to the people. Her character is also really important in this calculation. She believes she has been given a personal mission to deliver on Brexit. She is deeply and famously stubborn. If her own MPs won’t vote for her deal then she could very easily decide that the nation will and ask us to confirm what kind of Brexit we’d like. She will fiercely resist offering a free and fair choice that includes remain.
In my view there is only one genuinely fair kind of referendum that can get us out of this mess. Give people the three options of No Deal, May’s Deal and No Brexit and let them fairly choose on a single transferrable vote. I fear that this is exactly what both May and Corbyn are determined to avoid.
Watch out for the most dangerous phrase in current British politics. “A confirmatory vote”. If I am right then we may well be about to find out exactly what that means.