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I’ve been very critical of Theresa May over Brexit – but if anyone is going to protect the national interest in the negotiations, it’s her

In both her approach and the enormous task, May is acquiring something of Angela Merkel, the German chancellor who has quietly built her power on compromises to the point where her name has become a byword for political temporising

Mary Dejevsky
Thursday 05 July 2018 18:15 BST
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Theresa May shares many traits with the German chancellor
Theresa May shares many traits with the German chancellor

As Theresa May prepares to host her make-or-break away day at Chequers, she could be forgiven for locking herself in a dark room, disconnecting her WiFi, cancelling all the papers and jamming in the ear plugs to stifle all radio and TV. The British media are rarely charitable to their political leaders, but May has surely been subject to some of the most universally vicious attacks ever to have been inflicted on a serving prime minister, including from her own side, and over a sustained period, too.

She is accused of weakness for not bringing her cabinet to heel, showing special indulgence for the wayward foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, presiding over the demise of the hallowed principle of cabinet collective responsibility, saying one thing (to stop David Davis resigning) and something quite opposite (to stop Remainers abstaining in a parliamentary vote).

The (Conservative) commentator, Matthew Parris, has been among the most excoriating. Theresa May, he said last week, was proving “hopeless”; the office of prime minister was “effectively unoccupied”, and “if she’d been CEO of any medium-sized company, the board would have removed her years ago”.

Nor, in the past, have I spared her. In her early months as prime minister, it seemed to me that she was simply not up to the job. She was timid, indecisive, easily pressured to abandon apparently sincerely-made commitments and nigh-incapable of getting out a coherent message. In November 2016, I wrote that she seemed to be operating near the limits of her competency. There was a harshness about some of her statements that suggested a lack of political instinct, and it was hard to see she had what it would take to lead the UK out of the European Union, “while maximising the national interest and healing division.”

Then, having decided to call an election – again, this is simply my view – she allowed herself to be talked into running a highly personalised campaign, proved an absolutely hopeless campaigner, kept the voting public at bay, wimped out of the TV debate, and deserved the result she got. Hooking up with the Northern Ireland DUP was the catastrophic postscript, which has served to constrain what little freedom of manoeuvre she might have had ever since.

Nor have I altered those judgements. However, it also seems to me that many of the very particular criticisms levelled against her in recent weeks have been not only unfair, but quite wrong, and that the judgement of history – say five years or so down the line – may be rather different from what it is today.

Watching Theresa May at the despatch box this week, I had the impression of a woman who had thrown at least some caution to the wind – and not in a bad way. All right, so Jeremy Corbyn hardly strengthened his case by spending so much time talking about buses, but it was the difference in manner between them that seemed so telling. Maybe she has been taking lessons; maybe practice really does make proficient, if not perfect. But she looked like someone who, if she was doomed, was intent on going down fighting. Well, good for her.

Her public demeanour is one thing. But there is also, and at least as much to the point, her predicament. She chairs a cabinet that she appointed with one express purpose: to “deliver Brexit”, while balancing interests and views in a governing party, a parliament and a country which are almost equally divided about where the UK should be heading. Any resignation – for whatever reason, and the reasons for resignations thus far have had little to do with Brexit – threatens the balance she has tried to preserve, and replacements are chosen accordingly.

That this is a divided cabinet should not come as news to anyone. Theresa May had a choice when the job of prime minister was essentially thrust upon her. She could appoint a Brexiteer cabinet – and see her party break up, votes in the Commons lost, and the imminent choice between political stalemate or a new election. Or she could try to work with the hand she had been dealt (and which, it must be said, she had made worse by her ill-timed election).

Theresa May discusses buses“I suggest he asks some of those local authorities what they are doing about the buses in their own areas.”

Not unreasonably, and with some courage, she has chosen the latter course, and stuck with it. This entails a considerable amount of behind-scenes persuasion; a lot of time spent convincing one or other aggrieved minister to stick with it; and public statements crafted in such a way as to keep everyone, albeit grumpily and sometimes indignantly, on board. Is it prime ministerial weakness that has kept the show on the road to this – perhaps fatal – Friday, or is it rather a strange sort of strength?

This would be the strength to keep the ship steady, not to push the most opinionated (they might say principled) individuals too far, to keep the possibility of a “deal” – how I detest that word, why not agreement, or settlement? – in sight that would reflect the “will of the people” – that is, the actual result of the referendum, which was a narrow, yes narrow, vote in favour of Brexit.

In some ways, what seem to be the hallmarks of Theresa May – for which I, among others, have criticised her in the past – equip her quite well for this very task. There is her apparent lack of enterprise and imagination – which make her more of a chairwoman than a visionary. She is not going to go out on a limb, she is not going to bang a particular drum (at least not in public), she will not take obvious risks. At the same time, she has no fear of unpopularity (remember her confrontational addresses to the Police Federation), and she will see a job through.

She is patient and persistent; diligent and conscientious – as you can see from the accounts of her school days and, coincidentally, those pesky wheat fields. Does she perhaps see what she is doing now as something she may have been put on this Earth to do: shepherd the country through this historic transition? She will not flounce out, nor will she give up, unless or until everything shatters around her. She clearly feels a deep sense of personal responsibility for defending what she believes to be the national interest.

In both her approach and the enormous task, May is acquiring something of Angela Merkel, the German chancellor who has quietly built her power on compromises to the point where her name has become a byword for political temporising. So it seems fitting that she has spent the day before the Chequers gathering in Berlin – not only, perhaps, trying to establish Germany’s bottom line on a customs arrangement, but looking for tips on governing – and delivering - with a divided administration.

Of course, Merkel’s hold on power is starting to look as precarious as May’s, if not more so. And it could be argued that the chief reason why May remains in office is the impossibility of the job and the wreckage that would result from a leadership challenge from an arch-Brexiteer or an arch-Remainer. But the skill and sheer forbearance needed to keep the show on the road should not be underestimated.

So far, while seeming to stagger from crisis to crisis, May has nonetheless managed to steer all the necessary legislation through parliament, and minimised Brexit-related resignations. If she can keep her government together long enough to conclude a formal EU withdrawal agreement, history may take a more benevolent view of her stewardship than her critics do today.

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