May’s In Tray Piling Up?

Lord Heseltine could have been right when he suggested that it would have been better for May to position her government in the active left centre running the country and improving people’s lives by a combination of reform and efficiency, supported by economic revival, to create an economy fit for whatever kind of Brexit happened. He also suggested the Brexiteers should have been put together to sort out the strategy and detail of Brexit, for the rest of the government to approve. In others words tell the Brexiteers ‘you got what you wanted, now deliver it.’

Instead she has embraced Brexit with the blind fervor of the gullible convert and is pushing forward regardless of problems piling up. She exhibits a reckless disregard for the need for both a proper costing of the bill for her chosen hard Brexit and a well rehearsed plan to deal with its aftermath. We continue to hear reports of shambolic meetings behind the scenes and have watched the damaging spectacle of the unraveling budget. Now she has been politically outsmarted by Sturgeon, who knew from the very beginning that there was no chance of a referendum on Scottish independence being agreed, but huge political mileage to be gained from a refusal. This would highlight Tory willingness to over-ride the Scottish parliament, reinforcing the injustice of pulling Scotland out of the EU when two thirds of its voters opted to stay in.

As a consequence Scotland is now the elephant in the room of the the coming EU negotiations, with  the prospect of doing a deal to keep it in an attractive option to EU hardliners anxious not to give Britain an easy time. Moreover the consternation about the sudden fragility of Britain’s Union is noted in every EU capital and will weaken May’s bargaining power. The picture of what she has to lose is now floodlit.

Further complications arise from the loss of the Unionist majority at Stormont and the near impossibility of creating a customs free border between the North and South in the event of hard Brexit. At the moment the two economies work as one, only the politics are split, and when it comes to jobs, free movement and trade, the North, faced with a choice of fencing itself in to remain in the Union, or staying open and doing a political deal with the Republic, will chose Dublin over London, not least because, like Scotland, the majority voted to Remain.

May resorted to one of her vicarage strictures to brush off Surgeon. ‘Now is not the time’ she trilled. She was right over sentiment but wrong over subject. Now is not the time for Brexit. It never was and never will be.