If the winning slogan of the referendum was “take back control”, Theresa May’s brusque message as she launched Plan Brexit was that she was fed up with others telling her how she could and could not take Britain out of the EU.
Having been criticised for not providing a clear route map, Mrs May has banished her party’s back-seat drivers. This was the big “No” moment — to continued free movement, to the single market, the European Court of Justice (despite tergiversations that drove her Cabinet colleagues to distraction last year) and a purely transactional relationship with the EU Customs Union.
She had, she assured European leaders, tried being nice and it had got her nowhere. No more Mrs Nice Guy.
The shadow of tetchy relations with German Chancellor Angela Merkel haunted her speech. May had hoped Merkel’s pragmatism would help her forge a less fraught deal, only to feel spurned by Berlin in the early days of her premiership. (The PM had, I gather, expected more frequent contact with Merkel, who in turn feels she saw enough of David Cameron and needs a break from fretting about turbulent Brits.)
Many messages, such as the threat that a Britain not treated to a decent rite of passage could end up running policies outside the European social and tax model, as well as the warning that punitive treatment of Britain was “not the act of a friend”, are targeted on Berlin (French President François Hollande now being in the departure lounge and not much use anyway).
Having watched Mary Stuart, Robert Icke’s recreation of the fictional encounter between Mary Stuart and Elizabeth I at the Almeida, I wondered if he might like to turn his talents to another drama in which two strong women of opposing interests are entangled in the other’s fates. You can choose who you think will end up as Mary.
But while exuding a Thatcher-like resolve to do it her way, the PM must work within constraints. She can claim that she does not need to sign a “bad deal” — but she does need a deal under way by 2020, when she seeks re-election. The other deal is a basic WTO trade agreement — at a time when globalisation is not the pulsating force it was and many barriers can be strewn in the way of tariff-free arrangements.
She also gave way quietly on a parliamentary vote on Brexit, on the grounds that it is better to stop antsy MPs making a fuss about democratic deficits then offer them Hobson’s choice when the deal is so near completion that no realistic alternative is feasible.
As for the threat to undercut the European social model and attract new global business on leaner terms, it is not credible for someone whose “12 negotiating objectives” list includes protecting existing workers’ rights and addressing the grievances of those at the sharp end of liberal markets, to propose remaking Blighty as Taiwan to the EU’s China.
May is not a subtle political thinker and is frustratingly prone to contradiction in her grand designs. But she does understand one vital truth of survival, from the Tudors to the EU powerplay of today. No leader is entirely in charge of events. But the successful and politically long-lived are those who manage, among the sound and fury, to sound as if they are.
Anne McElvoy is senior editor at The Economist
