The EU is right, Theresa May is deluded about Brexit – there is no way she can make a success of it

If you thought chaos under David Cameron was chaos, chaos under Theresa May is going to be on different order of magnitude altogether

Tom Peck
Monday 01 May 2017 15:07 BST
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Details have been leaked about Theresa May's meeting with Jean Claude Juncker
Details have been leaked about Theresa May's meeting with Jean Claude Juncker

For the supremely maladjusted folk who make their living lunching politicians, and I speak of course of Her Majesty’s Westminster press corps, it is occasionally whispered of Theresa May that, by the end, even the cutlery is glancing toward the exit.

But even by her own uniquely low standards, it would appear that last week’s Downing Street dinner with EU Commission President Jean Claude Juncker has reached previously unknown depths of awkwardness.

It’s the little details – all of them diligently leaked by Juncker’s mates to a German newspaper – that do it.

Not once, not twice but fully three times, as Juncker points out that “Brexit cannot be a success” does David Davis interject to tell a favourite anecdote about the time he took the Home Office to court over illegal data retention and won – while the Home Office was being run by a woman called Theresa May.

But it is there that perhaps one should stop laughing. With the Brexit penny having been in freefall for almost a full year now (rather like its friend, the pound), it’s theoretically possible, though unlikely, that the full and frank details of the first meaningful Brexit meeting might be enough for the Brexiteers finally to acknowledge its descent.

The persistent warnings of Angela Merkel and Donald Tusk have been diligently ignored by much of the nation since long before the referendum. Could Jean Claude Juncker walking out of Downing Street and declaring himself “ten times more sceptical than before” about the possibility of any kind of Brexit deal being struck be the little detail that finally captures their attention?

Sadly, for those of us trying to close our eyes and visualise the sheer glorious horror of it all, the leaked information does not detail whether it was over starters, mains or to fill a conversational gap between courses that the Prime Minister attempted to move the conversation on from the £50bn bill she is refusing to settle to the question of “How do we make a success of all this?”

Nor do we know who spoke next after Juncker breezily informed her that “Brexit cannot be a success,” but if there are three re-tellings of the data retention story to shoehorn into the busy narrative it’s probably fair to imagine one of them coming here.

That the next morning, when Angela Merkel addressed the German parliament and told them “some in the UK still have illusions” about Brexit, we now know to have been a direct reference to the Prime Minister herself, should tell an electorate all it needs to know about the “strong and stable leadership” Theresa May is promising.

I happen to have pointed out, many times, how Theresa May’s sales pitch is utterly identical to the “strong and stable government with me or chaos under Ed Miliband” her predecessor won an unexpected majority with, and used it to detonate the national currency, then resign at dawn to usher in a new era of chaos the like of which has never been seen.

But it won’t matter. Nothing alters the choice on offer. It is simply sheer bad luck for us all that we live suddenly in an age where the two main parties have rendered themselves utterly incapable of the task of governing the country.

But the horrendous Juncker dinner should make one thing inescapably clear. If you thought chaos under David Cameron was chaos, chaos under Theresa May is going to be on different order of magnitude altogether.

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