She had become a byword for disaster. Wherever she went defeat was her handmaiden. Then suddenly out of nowhere she corralled her dog fight cabinet for eight solid hours, having seized their phones, so that they were cut off from leaking to the outside world or being briefed by their many factions.
First they were given the blood curdling report from the head of the civil service of what a hard Brexit would actually cost, then they were given the latest polling data and lack of personnel, logistics, money and membership which would make an election suicidal for the Tories. Finally the riot act was read to the hard Brexiteers, that through their allies in parliament, the ERG and the DUP, voting down everything to do with leaving the EU in a constructive fashion, she was now going to press the nuclear button. Corbyn.
She then had them effectively held prisoner until she had spoken to the nation and told it of one of the most unexpected and dramatic political reversals in our history. When she had finished the dejected and silent cabinet slinking out of Downing Street told its story of men and women in shock.
May had suddenly done what this blog had been urging for months and wiser commentators from the very moment she lost the election in 2017. She now recognised holding the Tory party together was a lost cause, the ERG were the enemy, the time had come to crush them and crush them she has. By winning the last battle, rather than making it the first, she has destroyed them. Like a great battleship going down they will explode in a wild display of flashes and bangs which will light up the sky, but as a political force they are finished. The Nationalist uprising is over.
Brexit is now officially a national, not party, emergency requiring, like both world wars and the great depression, a national solution. That means the two leading parties, nowadays Tory and Labour, working together. Either they will agree a plan forward which will take the UK out of the EU in an orderly fashion, which puts the national interest first, or the project will be delayed more or less indefinitely when it will fizzle out, or Article 50 will be revoked. There is also the possibility of a People’s Vote, which kill Brexit off. But one thing is for sure. The vision of fantasy trade deals and global Britain, never a prospect or reality, or the glibb exit of the EU and to hell with the consequences, is over.
The Brexit offered in the 2016 referendum on a fraudulent prospectus and voted for by the 17 million was never there. Like a building site greeting duped holidaymakers expecting a luxury hotel, sold to them by a dodgy holiday company, the dream was a con. In a very recent post this blog advised May to threaten to make her deal a confidence vote and if she lost she would advise the Queen to send for Corbyn. Well, she went one better. She sent for Corbyn herself.
I take my hat off to her.