Theresa May could still have a future – as a human sponge
Andrew Rawnsley
She very nearly quit as prime minister on election night.
She may end up wishing she had
‘She knows that the
only debate among Tories is when, not if, they will tell her to go.’
Sunday 16 July 2017 00.05 BST Last modified on Sunday 16
July 2017 16.35 BST
William Petty, the 2nd Earl of Shelburne, is one of the less
well-remembered people to have been a tenant of Number 10. I mention him
because, as Tory MPs argue about how long they should give Theresa May, the
brief, but illuminating lifespan of that 18th-century prime minister is a
possible guide to her future.
Shelburne was propelled into office after Britain suffered
the enormous humiliation of losing the American war of independence. Lord North
had to resign as prime minister and someone was needed to perform the thankless
task of negotiating a peace with the ex-colonies. Shelburne put his lips to
that poisoned chalice. He decided that Britain’s long-term interests were best
served by having a thriving trade relationship with an expanding and prosperous
United States. Most historians salute him for this act of visionary
statesmanship, but it won him few friends in a parliament that thought the
territorial settlement to be excessively generous to the United States. Once
the Peace of Paris was agreed, Shelburne was ejected from Number 10 and spent
the rest of his life moaning that his career had been a failure.
History does not repeat itself, but you can sometimes catch
a rhyme. So we can think of David Cameron, the man who destroyed his
premiership by accidentally amputating Britain from the European Union, as the
Lord North of our times. Theresa May is the Shelburne, a friendless premier
kept on at Number 10 for the duration of the withdrawal negotiations and
destined for defenestration as soon as they are completed.
This is one strand of thought in the febrile hive mind that
is the Conservative party. It sees a version of Mrs May’s future that goes
something like this. Brexit will be accompanied by a host of setbacks,
retreats, disappointments, compromises and crises. And that will be so even if
the horrendous process of extricating Britain from the EU is not an unmitigated
disaster. Someone has to absorb all the toxic feeling that this will arouse.
Someone also has to endure the weekly torture that will come with attempting to
get all the Brexit-related legislation through parliament when the government
does not have a reliable majority. Since it was Mrs May who landed the Tories
in this predicament by messing up the election, it is only appropriate that she
should be the human sponge who soaks up all the blame. This will be a thankless
and joyless role, but she made it her fate and at least she will get to be
prime minister for a bit longer. Then, when the Brexit job is done, the Tory
party will bid her thank you and goodnight. Mrs May will be consigned to a
Shelburne-like obscurity and the Conservatives will install a fresh leader to
try to rejuvenate the party in time for the next election.
This raises the question whether Mrs May can bear the
thought of carrying on like this. It is a highly unappealing prospect to be a
prime minister who is the prisoner of her colleagues, lingering at Number 10
until her party decides to dispatch her. She knows that her authority has been
eviscerated. She knows that none of her colleagues wants her to lead them into
another election. She knows that the only debate among Tories is when, not if,
they will tell her to go.
Credible sources say that she very nearly quit on 9 June and
was only persuaded not to announce her departure there and then when it was
pointed out that this could have led to a situation where the Queen was obliged
to invite Jeremy Corbyn to Buckingham Palace to give him first go at trying to
form a government. Mrs May recently admitted that she shed “a little tear” when
she realised how monumentally she had fouled up. That only hints at the
soul-scorching sense of personal failure, rejection and humiliation that she
feels at having squandered a massive advantage and thrown away what was
supposed to be an unlosable election.
I hear that she has told her closest friends that the
election result was the most devastating thing to have happened in her life since
the deaths of her parents when she was in her 20s. Mrs May’s inability, even a
month on, to give a coherent explanation of why she thinks the election went so
horribly wrong for her suggests that she has yet to process the trauma fully.
She knows that her colleagues regard her as a shattered
leader. Whenever she is in the company of foreign leaders, she must also be
aware that her international peer group think of her as a lame duck. It is
never easy being a prime minister in a hung parliament. It has to be even
harder when you have a personality that is terrified by the idea of not being
in control. Some of her allies in the Cabinet – she still has a few – talk
optimistically about Mrs May finding a way to reinvent herself and returning from
the summer break with a plan to rebuild her credibility.
The immensity of that challenge was underlined by the
reaction to the speech she delivered last week to mark her first year at Number
10. The speech was trailed as “a relaunch”. Unwisely so. Leaders who “relaunch”
usually do so because they are sunk. The most notable feature was her plea to
the opposition parties to “contribute, not just criticise” and “to come forward
with your own views and ideas”. In a different context, this appeal might have
won plaudits for being attractively unpartisan, but it was a month too late.
The right day to have extended the olive branch and talk about fashioning a
consensus would have been 9 June. The appeal would very probably have been
scorned, but it would have come over as more bold and authentic had Mrs May
acknowledged her changed status in the immediate aftermath of the election. To
wait five weeks and then suggest that she is up for some inter-party
co-operation reeks of desperation and was inevitably interpreted as further
evidence of her debilitation.
If Britain were more like Germany, there would likely be “a
grand coalition” to navigate the perilous waters ahead. But if Britain were
more like Germany, Brexit would not be happening in the first place. The Labour
leadership has neither the inclination nor the incentive to work with Mrs May
and she lacks the strength or dexterity to make the opposition look bad for
spurning her offer. Labour and the other opposition parties don’t regard the Brexit
legislation as a reason to throw a life preserver to the government. For them,
it is an opportunity to make the seas hellishly rough for the Conservatives.
I recently asked a member of the cabinet what Mrs May could
possibly do. She laughed and replied: “KBO: Keep Buggering On.” As a motto for
government, this lacks inspiration, but it sounds entirely realistic in its
poverty of ambition. I asked another member of the cabinet, one of the few
ministers who is genuinely close to Mrs May, whether there was anything that
could change the narrative of doom around her premiership. His remedy was
“time”. This minister mused that there might be some event over the horizon, an
unforeseen crisis that, if handled right, could offer Mrs May the opportunity
of a second audition with the country.
I suppose we should never say never. We do live in
incredibly volatile times; public opinion can be extraordinarily fickle. Ask
Jeremy Corbyn. Not so long ago, the Labour leader was plumbing record depths
for unpopularity; now, senior Tories tell me that Mr Corbyn would become prime
minister if there was an election tomorrow.
History provides some examples of prime ministers who have
been rescued from apparently irretrievable positions. In the summer of 2008,
Gordon Brown looked done for. Virtually all the media had turned on him. The
public couldn’t stand him. Key colleagues were preparing to oust him. Then
along came the Great Crash, to which Mr Brown reacted with a decisiveness and
vision that had been hitherto absent from his premiership. He was acclaimed, at
home and abroad, for having the right skill set for that crisis. His approval
ratings bounced. Plotting against him evaporated. His self-belief was restored.
That recovery didn’t last. He went on to lose the subsequent election, but Mr
Brown did manage to buy himself some extra time at Number 10.
Mrs May is still in office because her party fears what it
might do to itself in a chaotic and vicious Tory leadership contest. There is
no widely agreed candidate to replace her as prime minister. There is no name
that could be put to the cabinet and receive overwhelming support as the next
occupant of Number 10.
Which brings me to one final word about the Shelburne
premiership. Soon after he was ejected from Number 10, in came William Pitt the
Younger, one of the greats in the pantheon of premiers. Given the mess Britain
has got into, we could do with a 21st-century incarnation of that leader who
unified his country and restored its confidence. Unfortunately, here I have to
say that I struggle to find any historical rhymes. Gaze upon the potential
candidates to succeed Mrs May for as long as you like and you will find it hard
to glimpse a Pitt the Younger for our times.
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário