Brexit has fallen apart, but for Theresa May, nothing has changed

She was right to say back in 2017 that if we don’t get the negotiation right we risk our children and our children’s children’s future. Well it’s almost complete now and Brexiteers will still take no responsibility for their actions. Perhaps it is time the public had a chance?

What separates Theresa May from the era she inhabits is her fundamentally poor ability as a liar.

She lives in the age of Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage, men from whose lips lies drip like honey, unburdened by anything like a conscience, or just general self respect.

Men whose vanity has wreaked a whirlwind of self destruction, the wreckage of which sits in plain sight, but can still be lied away.

But when Theresa May knows things have gone badly wrong, knows she is hopelessly exposed, she is incapable of hiding it. It is to her credit as a human being, but to the detriment of how history will come to judge her.

When she appeared at the despatch box on Monday afternoon to account for the latest collapse of progress on Brexit, she almost appeared to shake with nerves. When the Labour benches laughed at her as she went through the current “problems” with the Brexit process, she blanched and buckled.

It has always been her tell. When things go wrong she cannot cover them up. That she was so unsure of herself shows she is equally unsure of the outcomes.

The statement itself changed nothing, and not much of it bears repeating. On Sunday, Dominic Raab, the Brexit secretary, went to Brussels for emergency meetings with Michel Barnier, the EU negotiator, ostensibly to finalise arrangements on the Northern Ireland border question, but returned home after an hour when no agreement could be reached.

“Substantial progress,” had been made, she told the house, on “a number of issues” but on the one that counts, no progress has been made at all.

The problem lies in what has come to be known as the “backstop to the backstop”. Which is to say that if, after the UK leaves the European Union, it fails to secure a free trade deal with the EU by the end of the “transition period”, Northern Ireland would have to remain in the EU’s customs union if the rest of the UK decided it wished to leave it.

It would be, Theresa May said, “an insurance policy for the insurance policy”, but it is not one that she will sign. On that front, her position has not changed in months, and nor has the European Union’s, and now there are weeks not months left. Something has to change. But there is every reason to believe that nothing will.

To look back now into the Brexit archives, there is virtually nothing said by any politician that does not now appear brazenly untrue or palpably ridiculous. Liam Fox claimed a free trade deal with the European Union would be “the easiest in human history”. According to the David Davis of 2016, by this point the UK would have signed dozens of free trade deals with dozens of countries, and sector by sector deals with various German industries, creating a free trade area “ten times larger” than the European Union.

We have been borne down in a torrent of lies and ignorance that has led us to this overwhelmingly serious juncture.

But one particular incident from the recent past does clearly signpost the way to where we currently find ourselves.

It was when Theresa May stood outside the door to No 10, a few weeks after calling the general election she said she never would, and delivered an angry rant directed at the European Union.

I quote the most important passage in full.

“So now more than ever we need to be led by a prime minister and a government that is strong and stable. Because making Brexit a success is central to our national interest. And it is central to your own security and prosperity,” she said then.

“Because while there is enormous opportunity for Britain as we leave the European Union, if we do not get this right, the consequences will be serious.

“And they will be felt by ordinary, working people across the country. This Brexit negotiation is central to everything.

“If we don’t get the negotiation right, your economic security and prosperity will be put at risk and the opportunities you seek for your families will simply not happen.

“If we do not stand up and get this negotiation right we risk the secure and well-paid jobs we want for our children and our children’s children too.

“If we don’t get the negotiation right, if we let the bureaucrats of Brussels run over us, we will lose the chance to build a fairer society with real opportunity for all.”

She was right to say this. She was also right to call a general election. She was right to want a thumping parliamentary majority to ease her vision for Brexit through the House of Commons.

But the public decided it did not want a strong and stable government led by Theresa May. What the public gave back to her was a chaotic mess, and most significantly of all, it left her dependent on the votes of a small, strange Northern Irish party, when the issue of Northern Ireland would be the most divisive of all.

That small party has responded to its extraordinary power of influence by gladly saying strange things to journalists. Now they say they will squeeze the government’s balls until their ears bleed. Previously they’ve likened the process to a blinking contest and they have “cut off their eyelids”.

The public shouldn’t be under any illusion about the lengths these guys will go to to get their way. Remember, the Democratic Unionist Party walked out on the Good Friday Agreement. In the Stormont Assembly, they have failed to form an executive for more than a year. They are not compromisers.

So what is the way out?

Naturally, the collapse of Brexit at this point has been met with a huge increase in the generalised cowardice of Brexiteers. The Tory party chairman James Cleverly voted for Brexit, and campaigned for Brexit. Now that the talks are in a more perilous position than ever before, Mr Cleverly has blamed the “loud, persuasive, and misguided UK voices… telling the EU that if they dig their heels in the UK would buckle and not leave”.

Mr Cleverly is a lieutenant colonel in the Territorial Army. It is frightening to consider that a man still nominally charged with the responsibility of keeping the public safe can be so entirely without backbone. Does wearing the Queen’s uniform not come with some vague obligation to take some responsibility for your actions?

But the Brexiteers will never, ever take responsibility for what they have done. It is legitimate to ask whether the public might want the opportunity to do so.

Currently, the UK stands on the brink of exiting the European Union without any kind of deal in place to maintain trading relationships. The damage to the economy would be instantaneous and severe. Whatever James Cleverly or John Redwood or Boris Johnson or Theresa May or anybody else might tell you, this is categorically not what the public voted for two years ago.

Theresa May was right to say that if we don’t get the negotiation right we risk our children and our children’s children’s future. Well the negotiation is almost complete now. There is not a soul on earth who thinks we have got it right. She spelled out the consequences of getting it wrong, and then got it all hopelessly wrong.

The question is simply whether it is okay to have knowingly taken such risks with our children’s futures, lost and then carried on regardless.

Perhaps the people deserve a chance to show themselves to be better than James Cleverly and the rest. To take some responsibility for themselves. To be asked if they’ve been given what they voted for.