Theresa May’s first pledge as PM was for a 'one-nation Britain'. Can she deliver?

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jul/16/theresa-may-one-nation-britain-prime-minister

Version 0 of 1.

As Theresa May was driven into Downing Street from Buckingham Palace at 6pm on Wednesday, she arrived to the sounds of a divided country. A mix of cheers and boos greeted Britain’s second woman prime minister from a crowd outside the gates. Protesters shouted “Brexit now” while a bunch of young people raised EU flags aloft.

Events had moved at dizzying speed all week, disorientating everyone involved in Westminster politics and all those outside who tried to keep up. David Cameron had departed in the opposite direction out of Downing Street with his family an hour before, his exit after six years as PM beautifully choreographed to disguise the traumatic circumstances of his leaving. Family hugs and waves from tearful staff created an illusion that Cameron was bidding goodbye as a departing hero and at a time of his choosing.

His successor, delivering her first words as prime minister from outside her new home, rose to the moment. She had been installed amid the most turbulent period in British politics anyone could remember and without time for much preparation. The country needed reassurance. May said she would heal the nation’s divisions and build bridges to help the least privileged. A tribute to Cameron was followed by a pitch to blue-collar Britain. Her government would deliver Brexit and refocus its priorities on people whose needs were greatest.

“When we take the big calls we will think not of the powerful but you,” she said. “When we pass new laws we will listen not to the mighty but to you. When it comes to taxes we will prioritise not the wealthy but you. When it comes to opportunity we won’t entrench the advantages of the fortunate few – we will do everything we can to help anybody, whatever your background, to go as far as your talents will take you.”

Then, with her husband, Philip, she strode inside. The entrance hall was packed with No 10 staff and her key advisers, including Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill, who had arrived earlier in the afternoon as the Camerons were packing their bags and dressing for the cameras. They clapped May in before she headed to the PM’s office, which had been cleared that morning of Cameron’s papers, pictures and family photos. She had decided her first duty had to be to call the man next door, the architect of six years of austerity and cuts which May had just suggested must now give way to a genuinely One Nation programme.

“She had to sack Osborne before anything else,” said one of her aides. “That had to be done first before she could begin summoning members of her new team. So that was what she did.”

Osborne’s was the first summons in a 24-hour blitzkrieg which laid waste to the old order. The Cameroons were blown away: next morning Michael Gove (who was told by May he had to show loyalty on the backbenches), Nicky Morgan, Oliver Letwin, John Whittingdale, Theresa Villiers and Stephen Crabb followed Osborne out of government. Then in came Boris Johnson – appointed to his own and everyone else’s astonishment to the post of foreign secretary – heading a list of Brexit supporters who would work alongside hard-core Remainers, including new chancellor Philip Hammond.

May continued her cull of the “Notting Hill set” over the weekend as the likes of Ed Vaizey, a close Cameron friend and supporter of Gove for the leadership, left the government. So did Anna Soubry, vocal advocate of the benefits of immigration and EU membership. Osborne’s ally, Matt Hancock, lost the right to attend cabinet, shuffled off to a job in charge of digital policy, while Greg Hands, another Osborne ally, was given a role in international trade under the resurrected Liam Fox.

It was total revolution, delivered by a politician at the height of her power. But sacking ministers, trotting out a One Nation mantra, and promising to “build a better Britain” will prove to have been the easy part for May. Most prime ministers – even those whose tenures are judged by historians to have been failures, such as Gordon Brown and before him John Major – have enjoyed honeymoon periods of months or years. May will be lucky to have one at all beyond the four days of adulation she has already received from parts of the media. Rarely have a prime minister’s soothing words and pledges on entering office – from her promise to prioritise the least well off in the tax system to that to keep the UK together as it heads out of the European Union – offered more hostages to fortune.

She has built her “unity cabinet” with men and women of divergent views on Europe and much else, and exiled to the backbenches a powerful collection of able and still ambitious Tories who will, if she falters, not be shy of seeking revenge. Hard-core Eurosceptics in her party were, within half an hour of her arrival in Downing Street, already insisting that if there was any delay in delivering Brexit (some say it has to be – and can be – done within six months) there will be hell to pay. One prominent Tory rightwinger said he feared that, with a prime minister and chancellor who backed Remain in charge, the right would soon have to resume a battle that the referendum was called to end.

“We won the war but are losing the peace,” one said. “Hammond talks about Brexit taking six years. If that is the case, we will not stand for it and nor will the millions out there who voted to leave. There will be riots on the streets, and rightly so.”

Brexit was the reason May realised her ambition to become prime minister. It destroyed Cameron’s premiership and wrecked his legacy, creating a void that no Brexiter was on hand to fill in the referendum’s chaotic aftermath. The quiet Remainer May’s moment arrived by chance. But now it gets serious: the task of delivering Brexit and limiting the resulting economic damage is arguably the most daunting to face a prime minister in postwar Britain.

May has, cleverly, put lead Brexiters – David Davis, Liam Fox and to a lesser extent Johnson – in charge of masterminding the process. It will be their prize to bring home – or their poisoned chalice, depending on how it pans out.

The core problem is that, as yet, no one in it knows what Brexit means, and what it will entail. May’s cabinet is split between the likes of Hammond, who insists that whatever happens the UK must retain as much access to the single market as possible, and others, such as Davis and Johnson, who seem to believe the UK can thrive outside the single market if it has to, and this is the price the country has to pay to extricate itself from the EU’s commitment to free movement of labour in order to control immigration.

After being appointed, Hammond said: “We have to make sure in our negotiations with the EU that we have very clearly in our minds the need to ensure access to the European Union single market for our financial services.” On the other hand, Davis, who is heading the new Brexit department, believes that trade deals can, if necessary, be struck with other countries that will serve the UK just as well. The only thing that is certain is that the UK economy faces a prolonged period of what it hates most – uncertainty. Hammond is braced for growth to slow, the pound to fall further and the housing market to stall, with all the effects that will have on consumer demand and tax receipts. And this when his prime minister wants to help the poorest through the tax system.

Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform, who talks regularly to senior officials in all other EU governments, says those who believe the UK can have its cake and eat it from Brexit – access to the single market and limits on free movement – are deluding themselves. The Brexit con will soon be exposed: “The other members of the EU are not prepared to give Britain full access to the single market, as Norway enjoys, or large parts of it, as Switzerland has, without our accepting the conditions Norway and Switzerland meet: substantial payments into the EU budget and complete openness to workers from EU countries.

“The 27 will be tough with the British on this point because of principle – they regard the ‘four freedoms’ of openness to flows of goods, services, capital and labour as indivisible; and because of realpolitik they do not want the UK to be seen to flourish outside the EU since that could encourage Eurosceptics in many other member states to say, ‘Let us join the British on the outside’. ”

Within May’s new cabinet, the faultlines and potential splits are too wide to remain hidden for long. Wherever you look lie potential clashes and impossible dilemmas. What attitude will arch-Remainer Amber Rudd, the new home secretary, take to the UK extricating itself from EU anti-terror legislation in the aftermath of events in Nice? Hammond is a pro-EU fiscal hawk in charge of the nation’s purse strings. But he believes the purse can best be filled – and May’s One Nation vision realised – by retaining as close a relationship with EU markets as possible.

How can the SNP’s desire for independence be contained if Brexit means Brexit? Gavin Kelly, chief executive of the Resolution Trust, says the task facing May is daunting across the entire domestic agenda, too, as the UK teeters on the brink of recession. How will voters perceive post-Brexit Britain if services deteriorate, wages fall and May’s sunny uplands fail to materialise?

“The new PM has a difficult inheritance, with further deep cuts to tax credits, local government, social care and schools all scheduled – never mind escalating hospital deficits and ailing flagship policies such as universal credit,” says Kelly. “All this, together with the expected economic slow-down, will put great pressure not just on the public finances but also on her relationship with a new chancellor.”

May has one political dynamic working unquestionably to her advantage. Labour is on the floor and unable to provide any serious scrutiny. That will offer her a partial shield until the opposition becomes worthy of the name again. But having stamped her mark with such a spectacular demonstration of prime ministerial power in her first few days, her real test must now begin.

Her cabinet meets on Tuesday for the first time and will start trying to deliver on her dual promise of Brexit and a better, One Nation, Britain. If, when she leaves Downing Street, whenever that might be, she has achieved both, her reputation in her own party might even surpass that of the first female prime minister to reach No 10. However, if she fails, it is likely to have been Europe that will have done for yet another Tory PM.