The new Conservative prime minister faces huge
challenges on Brexit and the economy. What will help her most is the turmoil in
opposition parties
SO IT was a coronation after
all. On July 13th Theresa May, the home secretary, became Conservative Party
leader and prime minister after her only remaining rival, Andrea Leadsom, the
energy minister, pulled out of the race.
Mrs Leadsom’s ostensible reason was that
she had the backing of only 84 Tory MPs, against Mrs May’s 199. But what
counted more was that, under pressure, she had shown her unfitness for the job
in several gaffes, embroidering her financial career and hinting that, as a
mother, she was better qualified than the childless Mrs May.
A new Tory prime minister is
but one feature of the redrawn political landscape after Britain’s vote to
leave the European Union. The opposition Labour Party has sunk into ever-deeper
chaos under Jeremy Corbyn, who now faces a leadership challenge. The populist
UK Independence Party has a vacuum at the top following the resignation of its
leader, Nigel Farage, on the achievement of his career’s ambition. And although
the Scottish Nationalists, the third-biggest party in Westminster, are united
under Nicola Sturgeon, they are uncertain how and when to pursue independence
post-Brexit.
Mrs May backed the Remain side
in the referendum, unlike most Tory voters. Yet they welcomed her victory, if
only because she has shown more political nous than her pro-Brexit opponents.
Indeed, it is remarkable that the Brexiteers, having won a famous victory, have
now largely fled the battlefield, leaving Remainers to sort out the mess. Mrs
May was only ever lukewarm about the EU, and has promised that “Brexit means
Brexit”. Still, she can expect cries of treachery if the process stalls.
As home secretary for six
years, she built a reputation as a moderniser, picking fights with the police.
She was quicker than most Tories to see which way the wind was blowing on
issues such as gay marriage; in 2002 she warned that many voters saw the
Conservatives as the “nasty party”. She is a child of England’s home counties,
without the privileged background of the outgoing prime minister, David
Cameron, and many of his circle.
Her first challenge will be to
form a new cabinet. The next question will be whether she wants or needs a
stronger democratic mandate. In 2007, when Gordon Brown assumed the premiership
without any Labour challenger, she accused him of running scared by not holding
an election to test his credentials. Yet she now insists that no election is
needed before the current parliamentary term ends in 2020. The Fixed-term
Parliaments Act of 2011 makes it harder than it used to be for prime ministers
opportunistically to call early elections. But Labour’s disarray may yet tempt
her to try, perhaps next year or in 2018.
Her biggest test of all will
be Brexit. She has experience of Brussels, notably in skilfully negotiating
Britain’s opt-out from most EU justice and home-affairs policies in 2014, while
ensuring that it opted back in to 35 measures, including Europol (which assists
member’ police forces), the European arrest warrant and the passenger-names
directive. But she has not even met most of the EU leaders. No doubt they will
give her a cautiously warm welcome (she has some affinities with Germany’s
chancellor, Angela Merkel, including an upbringing as a pastor’s daughter). But
they will also say it is for her to explain how she wants to proceed—and how
fast.
Mrs May insists that there
will be no attempt to remain inside the EU and there can be no second
referendum. But she has also said she will not trigger Article 50, the legal
route to Brexit, until she has fixed her own negotiating position. And,
although as home secretary she was fiercely anti-immigration, she has been
careful to insist only that free movement of people in the EU cannot continue
as it currently operates. She knows the value of full membership of Europe’s
single market, and she understands the trade-off that may be necessary between
preserving this and setting limits on free movement. It is within this
framework that the hard bargaining with Britain’s partners will eventually take
place. Many colleagues are floating ideas loosely called Norway-plus (or
Norway-minus), which involve trying to keep as much as possible of Britain’s
membership of the single market while being permitted to impose some controls
or an emergency brake on free movement.
It will help that the
recession that is now on the cards will have the side-effect of curbing
immigration. But in other respects the economy will be the second big headache
for Mrs May. She has sensibly junked her predecessor’s target of balancing the
budget by 2020. In a speech on July 11th she talked of more investment in
infrastructure (though she is opposed to a third runway at Heathrow airport)
and of the need to improve Britain’s lamentable productivity. Less happily, she
spoke of having a “proper industrial strategy” and evinced a surprising
hostility to foreign takeovers of British companies; and she leaned leftwards
in proposing that workers and consumers should sit on company boards, as well
as limiting executive pay. Mrs May’s declared goals of building an economy that
works for everyone, not just for the few, and of doing more to help the poor
and disadvantaged who have suffered most in the past decade, are admirable. But
she may yet need to curb her more interventionist instincts.
Her best asset, however, will
be the chaos of the opposition. The Tories precipitated the Brexit vote for
internal reasons and in doing so split their members and decapitated their
leadership. It is extraordinary that they now appear the more united of the two
main parties.
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