Theresa May Has Poisoned the Well of British Politics

Theresa May stands in front of two Union Jack flags.
On the issue of Brexit, Theresa May invokes only her own blank sense of obligation, of continuing with something no matter the cost, of buggering on regardless.Photograph by Chris J. Ratcliffe / Bloomberg / Getty

On Wednesday evening, Theresa May addressed the nation, seeking to rally the population behind her Brexit deal and to end the country’s political crisis. “Of this I am absolutely sure: you, the public, have had enough,” the Prime Minister said, standing in front of two furled Union Jack flags against the wood-panelled walls of 10 Downing Street.

May’s four-minute speech was striking for its use of the second person. “You are tired of the infighting. You are tired of the political games and the arcane procedural rows,” she said. “You want this stage of the Brexit process to be over and done with.” Brexit has been Britain’s populist breakdown. Since the vote to leave the European Union, in 2016, it has set the vague but justified grievances of millions of voters who voted Leave against the unfeeling reality of international law and frictionless supply chains. The government, led by May, and the six hundred and fifty members of the House of Commons have had the miserable task of mediating between those forces. Last night, it was shocking—even in the tumult of a full-blown constitutional crisis—to hear a British Prime Minister attempt to separate herself from the rest of the political class and turn the people against the M.P.s who have voted against her Brexit strategy. “I am on your side,” May said. “It is now time for M.P.s to decide.”

These were desperate words on a desperate day. May has lost control of her government and of Brexit. In the morning, she was forced to write to Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, asking for a delay to Britain’s departure from the E.U., which is, in theory, only eight days away. Her plan to speak to the people was announced not by her, or by Downing Street, but by the Irish Prime Minister, Leo Varadkar, in the middle of the afternoon. When the time came, May was twenty minutes late to the podium—she had been in a meeting with Conservative M.P.s who had been persuaded to vote for her deal last week, when it was rejected for a second time, and were now wavering about supporting her third and final go. There is little prospect that May’s deal will pass in the coming days, or that a two- or three-month delay to the process will resolve anything. There is only shapelessness and chaos. Two Tory M.P.s reportedly told May that it was time to resign. “I have never been in a meeting like it. The atmosphere was extraordinary,” another told the Guardian. “She looked like Alice in Wonderland, when she drank that potion, shrinking in her chair.”

The truth is that May’s attempt to rouse the nation was in keeping with her handling of Brexit for the best part of three years. It was bold but without substance. It sought legitimacy but lacked feeling. It declared clarity where there is none. Since May took office, in the summer of 2016, she has always insisted that a clear majority of the population voted for Brexit and that its instruction was categorical. But it was not. Although she voted against it, she has never been honest about the trade-offs incurred by Britain’s exit from the world’s largest economic and political supranational body. She has never said that Brexit would make Britain wealthier, or healthier, or a more tolerant place to live, because it will do none of those things. She has never told a story about how the country has got to where it is, or where we might wish to go. Instead, as she did on Wednesday night, May invokes only her own blank sense of obligation, of continuing with something no matter the cost, of buggering on regardless. “You want us to get on with it,” she told a nation, whose people and politicians are traumatically divided on precisely this question. “And that is what I am determined to do.”

The reaction to May’s speech has been pitiless. “Good God, what was that all about?” Tom Bradby, the host of ITV’s “News at Ten” tweeted immediately afterward. “The PM just came out to give an emergency statement, in which she said it was everyone else’s fault.” Within minutes, May’s fellow-M.P.s, who will decide the final fate of her Brexit deal, her government, and whether the country will avoid a rapidly approaching no-deal departure, next Friday, saw her address for what it was: a poisoning of the well of British politics at a moment of profound vulnerability and importance. Lisa Nandy, a pro-Brexit Labour M.P., whom the government has been courting to support May’s deal, described the statement as disgraceful. “Pitting Parliament against the people in the current environment is dangerous and reckless,” she said. On Thursday morning, the Speaker of the Commons, John Bercow, reassured M.P.s as they entered the chamber, “None of you is a traitor. . . . The sole duty of every Member of Parliament is to do what he or she thinks is right.” May was not there. She had travelled to Brussels, for an E.U. summit that will decide whether to grant the delay—or delays—that Britain will need to unblock the impasse in Westminster. On Wednesday night, May, who has been an M.P. for twenty-one years, took the risk of disavowing the rest of the country’s politicians in order to summon a crude popular will that is simply not there. Now she is alone.