Why May failed

Delivering a smooth Brexit which worked for the whole country was never going to be a walk in the park. But Theresa May has made the whole process far, far more difficult than it needed to be. Of course, her attitude was suboptimal: she never hated Brexit, but as a technocrat unused to thinking outside the box, she never saw the point of it. From the beginning, it was all about damage limitation. The same could be said, though, for lots of senior Tory Remainers, and it seems unlikely that almost all of the alternative prime ministers in 2016 would have been defeated in the Commons last night by an unprecedented margin.

So, what is it about Theresa May which made her uniquely unsuited to the task of delivering Brexit?

First, she is a woeful orator with no instinct for stories. After nearly twenty years of Blair and Cameron (and a little bit of Brown), it’s not surprising that Parliament, and the country, became cynical about ‘spin’. But spinning a story around a policy – and persuading the press to publish it – is an art, and an important one. Blair, whose policies were always dressed up in shiny New Labour narrative, and who managed (against all the odds) to get the backing of The (Murdoch-funded) Sun, mastered it.

Theresa May emphatically has not. When it was first announced that the Prime Minister had succeeded in negotiating a deal with the EU, May loyalists were hopeful that a tide of relief and optimism would carry it through Parliament. But it never happened. Why? Because the Prime Minister failed to make that one, passionate and irresistible speech which may have translated the deal from boring Brexit policy into the story of the future of Global Britain.

Second, she is ‘unclubbable’. During her short campaign to be Tory Party leader, we were told this was a good thing. She’s a serious politician who doesn’t waste time schmoozing in the tea room, it was said, which is exactly what we need in these troubled times. But in troubled times, we need our friends. And May failed to make or keep them.

The DUP, natural allies of the Tories and keen Brexiteers, wanted to find common ground with the Government, but after decades of being treated like irritating trouble-makers by successive British governments, they were, understandably, wary. If May had befriended Foster, perhaps over a glass of wine and an off-the-record chat, she may have earned her trust, and persuaded her that this Government would be the one to take Northern Ireland seriously. Instead, she first neglected her – and then antagonised her by filling the Northern Ireland Office with ex Home Office colleagues to whom she felt she owed jobs, rather than heavyweights with a deep and long-standing interest in the province,

And she took the same approach with Labour. Just two years ago, 172 of Labour’s 229 MPs –  many of them with Leave voting constituencies – voted against their leader in a No Confidence vote. These Corbyn sceptics, especially the ones with a vested interest in delivering (a relatively soft) Brexit, were surely low hanging fruit for a Prime Minister trying to garner support for her soft Brexit deal. But instead of buttering them up over a cosy dinner, or visiting their constituencies and explaining her proposal to their constituents in terms which would appeal to them, she ignored them. It’s hard to imagine the affable David Cameron, who rubbed along with his deputy, Lib Dem Nick Clegg, almost suspiciously well, making the same mistake.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, she just hasn’t been brave enough. Of course, losing the vote at the end of last year would have been embarrassing. But the delay has achieved nothing whatsoever. 117 Conservative MPs voted against May in the confidence vote last year, and 118 voted against her deal last night. If she had been bold and gone ahead with the vote in December, she would have had an extra month to use the mammoth defeat as leverage to squeeze some concessions out of the EU. By chickening out when she did, she has cost herself that precious time – and eclipsed any silver lining to the defeat.

Brexit is the biggest challenge this country has faced in generations. But, like any huge historical moment, it was also an opportunity for a regular politician to rise to the rank of statesman. Sadly for herself and the country, reserved and technocratic May has bottled it.