SOME trades, fairly or not, have become a by-word for fraudulence. It must be tough, for example, to be a snake-oil salesman, although fans of Chinese medicine remain keen on the stuff.
Politician, naturally, is high on the list of untrustworthy professions. Still, if you want to offer reassurance that you’re well-intentioned and plain-dealing, it doesn’t seem sensible to branch out as a bogus psychic, one of the few lines of work that people distrust even more. Yet that was the Prime Minister’s strategy on Wednesday evening, when she revealed herself in a public address as Mystic May, Mindreader.
Like the late Doris Stokes communing with the aether and asking if the name Chris rings a bell with anyone in the audience, Mrs May revealed a series of revelations and occult certainties that had presumably been divulged to her by Higher Powers. MPs, she disclosed, are unworthy of your trust. “All [they] have been willing to say,” she explained, “is what they do not want.” She, by contrast, is “absolutely sure: You, the public, have had enough.” She’s also had a divine revelation that what we don’t want is a second referendum, or a long delay in leaving.
Some of us, blessed with extensive experience reading the newspapers, watching Sir John Curtice on the telly, and talking to people in pubs, have a dim sense that the matter is a little more complicated. Even the election of these MPs, after all, was an exercise in trying to find out what the public wants; their inability to agree – in many cases, even with people in their own party – is a fair indication that the public does not possess a single view of Brexit that just happens to be identical to that of Mrs May, seer and Sybil. If you cast your mind back to the referendum, you may recall that there was a difference of opinion on whether we should leave or remain.
Mrs May’s speech was, in at least one respect, illuminating. It presented in their shining glory all the characteristics that have made her one of the worst Prime Ministers ever. As well as the delusional psychic powers, it illustrated her intransigence, her authoritarian tendencies, her utter contempt for her Parliamentary colleagues, a naked populism that Pierre Poujade would have thought de trop, and total disdain for trivial obstacles such as objective reality or telling the truth.
Read more: Alison Rowat: Mother of Parliaments is unfit
It may be true that there’s precious little popular or parliamentary appetite, and no majority, for the Withdrawal Agreement, no deal, lengthy delay, a second referendum or reversing the vote. But it is a flat lie to say MPs have been willing to say only what they don’t want. They’ve been clamouring to say just that, and attempting to get indicative votes that might narrow the options down to what might actually get through the Commons. But they’ve been constantly frustrated by Mrs May’s refusal to acknowledge that anything other than her proposals should be considered.
Mrs May said that she was elected to deliver what the people had decided on in the referendum. But she wasn’t actually elected (except by Tory MPs), having thrown away the majority she inherited in what must be the most inept campaign ever staged. Only the fact that Jeremy Corbyn is even more useless than she is kept her in the job, with a majority (now) of precisely zero. But leave that aside.
The more puzzling question is why she, a Remain voter, should think she possesses unique insight into what those who voted to leave the EU want. The options, which she refused to let anyone, even (in fact, particularly) her own Brexit secretaries, discuss or explore, were legion. Many of those who campaigned for Leave wanted, for instance, to remain in the single market – pointing to the Efta countries, such as Norway, or to Switzerland, with its comprehensive free trade and movement arrangements. The fact that some may now have hardened their position to argue that that is not “real” Brexit is irrelevant; it’s still leaving the EU.
Instead of giving this any consideration, Mrs May set out a series of “red lines” plucked from her own imagination, though we are now apparently expected to regard them as something along the lines of the golden tablets and rock spectacles delivered to the prophet Joseph Smith.
Unsurprisingly, these did not correspond with the views of most Leave voters, who – despite attempts to characterise them as uniformly bigoted and xenophobic – never once listed immigration as their first priority in any poll conducted before or after the referendum. They did, however, resemble Mrs May’s track record at the Home Office, when she was responsible for such measures as the “Hostile Environment” and attempted to deport members of the Windrush generation who were perfectly entitled to live in the UK.
Another of her priorities was the European arrest warrant and security co-operation, though she seems not to have considered the security implications for the Irish border, despite it having been the single greatest security issue for the UK for the past half-century.
She has given no evidence that she understood the opportunities Brexit afforded for free trade, something which should have been given a high priority, if only because of the possibility of a no-deal Brexit. Indeed, on trade issues the only impulse she has demonstrated is a willingness to cave in to rent-seekers amongst the large corporations and special interest groups.
But then that is of a piece with Mrs May’s political philosophy, profoundly illiberal when it comes to regulation, immigration and human rights, and essentially left-wing on economic issues.
She is a disastrous failure, not just as a Prime Minister, but as a Conservative leader. Her efforts to keep the party together have left it split more than at any time since the arguments over the repeal of the Corn Laws. Her professed Unionism has threatened both Ireland and Scotland’s future in the UK.
The tragedy is that, if her deal goes through, it will be worse than all the other possible outcomes, and if she resigns because it fails to go through, the damage will already have been done. She may yet go down in history as an even worse PM than Lord North, who lost America. She could lose not just Europe, but the UK.
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