12 May 2019 | OPINION
By end of this month, Theresa May will become Britain’s 13th longest serving Prime Minister. Despite breaking multiple promises about Brexit and losing over a thousand councillors in the local elections, she will still be our Prime Minister.
According to recent reports, she is determined to secure ‘her legacy’ as PM and has promised to go if she gets her deal through Parliament. Once May’s premiership is seen through this lens all recent events become clearer. She has refused to resign because to do so would see her go down in history as the PM who failed to deliver Brexit. By doing a deal with Labour and Jeremy Corbyn, whom for three years we have been told is a ‘threat’ to Britain, she hopes to secure the passing of her Withdrawal Agreement through Parliament. She hopes this will result in her avoiding the fate of the Prime Minister who bottled Brexit. In her increasing desperate ‘Brexit means Brexit’ at all costs, or in the case of the potential deal with Labour, Brexit means BRINO (Brexit In Name Only). So diluted is her position now from when she gave her Lancaster House speech in January 2017, that this is not too much of an exaggeration.
There has even been talk this week of her determination to stay in office for longer than the tenure of the much lamented Gordon Brown, and that in itself speaks volumes of her ambition. To put this into perspective, our most recent Prime Ministers all have tainted legacies to varying degrees. Tony Blair, often referred to as the ‘most hated man in Britain’ today will forever be remembered for, on the one hand achieving electability for the Labour Party years but most damningly taking Britain into Iraq. Similarly David Cameron won office for the Tories but will go down in history as the man who brought about Brexit.
Politics, both inside and outside Westminster, continues to be dominated by Brexit. Other pressing issues facing our country are relegated to the side-lines. It is clear that Government policy has effectively been put on hold until Brexit is fulfilled. Under current Conservative Party rules leadership challenges can only occur once every 12 months and a lot of blame has, rightly, been attributed to the ERG for fatally mistiming their attempted coup.
Nonetheless the 200 MPs who voted confidence in May in December must also be questioned. One has to wonder what they were thinking. The deal with the EU had already been done by that point and it was clear to all but the most deluded of Cabinet Ministers that it was about to receive a heavy defeat in the House of Commons.
Of course the rules around a second leadership challenge in less than twelve months could be changed but the Tory party is heavily split with Brexiteers desperately wanting May gone but Remainers, of which there are a majority in the Conservative Parliamentary party, keeping her in position for fear of something worse. They are so terrified of a Boris Johnson or Dominic Rabb premiership that they are willing to stick with the current farcical situation.
For many Tories it is simply unthinkable to actually have a real Brexiteer in charge of Brexit. Far from the Brexiteers holding the party to ransom it now appears the Remainers are doing just that.
So the Conservative party continues to suffer from a chronic lack of leadership. The lights are on, but no one is home. And this country continues to limp on.
