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| You can question May’s Brexit strategy. Just don’t ask if she’s up to the job | You can question May’s Brexit strategy. Just don’t ask if she’s up to the job |
| (about 3 hours later) | |
| Theresa May’s Brexit strategy, it would be fair to say, is not going well. It is hard to imagine how it could: there’s not exactly a Baedeker guide of the best options, because there aren’t any. There is no good Brexit strategy. The best we can hope for is a not-catastrophic one. | Theresa May’s Brexit strategy, it would be fair to say, is not going well. It is hard to imagine how it could: there’s not exactly a Baedeker guide of the best options, because there aren’t any. There is no good Brexit strategy. The best we can hope for is a not-catastrophic one. |
| Yesterday, against a ludicrous backdrop of a desert-blue sky and tanks improbably arranged on the deck of a Royal Navy ship – May is on a tour of the Gulf – she declared she was not going to have a hard Brexit or a soft one, but a “red, white and blue” Brexit. | Yesterday, against a ludicrous backdrop of a desert-blue sky and tanks improbably arranged on the deck of a Royal Navy ship – May is on a tour of the Gulf – she declared she was not going to have a hard Brexit or a soft one, but a “red, white and blue” Brexit. |
| This fatuous statement can most charitably be understood as a kind of come-on to the Ukip-leaning tendency in Lincolnshire. There is a byelection in Sleaford tomorrow, and it may have been hoped that voters there would be susceptible to the sight of their leader looking leader-ish, in a very, very remote echo of Elizabeth I, the first captain of Galleon Britain, and abandon any thought of sending an “out, now!” Ukippy message. | This fatuous statement can most charitably be understood as a kind of come-on to the Ukip-leaning tendency in Lincolnshire. There is a byelection in Sleaford tomorrow, and it may have been hoped that voters there would be susceptible to the sight of their leader looking leader-ish, in a very, very remote echo of Elizabeth I, the first captain of Galleon Britain, and abandon any thought of sending an “out, now!” Ukippy message. |
| That was the message from Bahrain. In Westminster, a quite different game was being played in May’s name. Under pressure from the threat of a backbench revolt in the Commons today, where a Labour debate was threatening to become an early test of cross-party support for a soft Brexit, Downing Street conceded that there would be at least an outline proposal of a Brexit negotiation strategy before article 50 is triggered. In return, triggered it would be, by the end of March. | That was the message from Bahrain. In Westminster, a quite different game was being played in May’s name. Under pressure from the threat of a backbench revolt in the Commons today, where a Labour debate was threatening to become an early test of cross-party support for a soft Brexit, Downing Street conceded that there would be at least an outline proposal of a Brexit negotiation strategy before article 50 is triggered. In return, triggered it would be, by the end of March. |
| Neither of these was a very elegant move. They both felt too obviously tactical, and insufficiently as if they were elements of a purposeful strategy. But they are absolutely standard political manoeuvres, familiar from the repertoire of successive prime ministers trying to stay ahead of an increasingly sceptical electorate. | Neither of these was a very elegant move. They both felt too obviously tactical, and insufficiently as if they were elements of a purposeful strategy. But they are absolutely standard political manoeuvres, familiar from the repertoire of successive prime ministers trying to stay ahead of an increasingly sceptical electorate. |
| What is unusual – apart from the utterly depressing and irrelevant conversation about the cost of a pair of trousers May recently wore – is that they are accompanied by a low background muttering, the drone of male – almost all male – voices, asking that awful question: the ‘is she up to it?’ question. | What is unusual – apart from the utterly depressing and irrelevant conversation about the cost of a pair of trousers May recently wore – is that they are accompanied by a low background muttering, the drone of male – almost all male – voices, asking that awful question: the ‘is she up to it?’ question. |
| Is she up to it? A question without an answer; a question that is not intended to have an answer, for to ask it is to answer it. Often it is “asked” with a hesitant, even an apologetic tone, as in, I don’t really want to suggest it, and obviously I raise it reluctantly because I know how it will seem (subtext: I don’t want you to think I’m in any remote way misogynistic) but all the same, is she up to it? | Is she up to it? A question without an answer; a question that is not intended to have an answer, for to ask it is to answer it. Often it is “asked” with a hesitant, even an apologetic tone, as in, I don’t really want to suggest it, and obviously I raise it reluctantly because I know how it will seem (subtext: I don’t want you to think I’m in any remote way misogynistic) but all the same, is she up to it? |
| Ask Google, that great instant polling machine, whether Theresa May is up to the job and there is the Scottish Daily Record asking the question on the very day she became prime minister. Search for Hillary Clinton and it was a live issue almost to polling day. Ask if Trump is up to the job and … silence. | Ask Google, that great instant polling machine, whether Theresa May is up to the job and there is the Scottish Daily Record asking the question on the very day she became prime minister. Search for Hillary Clinton and it was a live issue almost to polling day. Ask if Trump is up to the job and … silence. |
| Being up to the job is nothing to do with actually being any good at it. No one ever asks if David Cameron was up to the job, even though he staked the country on his capacity to win things, and lost. Even after Iraq, no one ever suggested Tony Blair was just not up to it. | |
| It’s all about whether you emanate the kind of pheromones that make people think you are, about whether you embody the look. So that people don’t ask whether that really is a Richard James suit that Cameron’s wearing (starting price £3,350) because that’s the sort of suit that Tory prime ministers wear. | |
| On the wall above my desk hangs a brilliant Steve Bell cartoon. It dates back to the end of 2002 when Estelle Morris resigned as education secretary, saying she thought she wasn’t up to the job. Or rather, she “admitted” she wasn’t up to the job. The cartoon shows her successor, Charles Clarke, inflated with testosterone, bellowing: “So I’m not up to the job either? How dare you assume I give a shit!!” | |
| So do, please, stop asking if May is up to the job. She’s doing it, right? | So do, please, stop asking if May is up to the job. She’s doing it, right? |
| • You can catch up on the discussion on this article and others on our Your Opinions thread | • You can catch up on the discussion on this article and others on our Your Opinions thread |
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