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You can find the current article at its original source at https://www.theguardian.com/politics/commentisfree/2018/mar/29/the-sky-wont-fall-in-after-brexit-maybe-not-for-you-theresa
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| The sky won't fall in after Brexit? Maybe not for you, Theresa | The sky won't fall in after Brexit? Maybe not for you, Theresa |
| (2 days later) | |
| There are few things more guaranteed to induce a sense of national panic than the prime minister announcing she is doing a whistle-stop tour of the country to reassure everyone that leaving the EU wasn’t going to be quite as bad as they feared. To mark the year to go till Brexit day, Theresa May started out by spending a few minutes at a textile factory in Ayr. Shortly after she left, most of the workers were checking to see if the factory was about to close. | There are few things more guaranteed to induce a sense of national panic than the prime minister announcing she is doing a whistle-stop tour of the country to reassure everyone that leaving the EU wasn’t going to be quite as bad as they feared. To mark the year to go till Brexit day, Theresa May started out by spending a few minutes at a textile factory in Ayr. Shortly after she left, most of the workers were checking to see if the factory was about to close. |
| Quite why the prime minister puts herself and the nation through such ordeals is something of a mystery. She finds it hard enough to look one of her cabinet ministers in the eye and clearly feels even more uncomfortable meeting ordinary people. The feeling is mutual. Her smiles are more like gurns and her conversation is mostly notable for its silences. At her second stop of the day, she sucked the life out of a children’s daycare centre in Northumberland and everyone breathed a sigh of relief when she headed off. | Quite why the prime minister puts herself and the nation through such ordeals is something of a mystery. She finds it hard enough to look one of her cabinet ministers in the eye and clearly feels even more uncomfortable meeting ordinary people. The feeling is mutual. Her smiles are more like gurns and her conversation is mostly notable for its silences. At her second stop of the day, she sucked the life out of a children’s daycare centre in Northumberland and everyone breathed a sigh of relief when she headed off. |
| Next on the itinerary was Bangor in Northern Ireland, where she had a private lunch with four farmers. One of them was dragged out to discuss on Sky News how it felt to have drawn the short straw. The poor man looked totally traumatised by the experience as he described how the prime minister had done absolutely nothing to convince them that she had a solution to the Irish border question. Partly because she didn’t have one, but also because she had barely said a word. | Next on the itinerary was Bangor in Northern Ireland, where she had a private lunch with four farmers. One of them was dragged out to discuss on Sky News how it felt to have drawn the short straw. The poor man looked totally traumatised by the experience as he described how the prime minister had done absolutely nothing to convince them that she had a solution to the Irish border question. Partly because she didn’t have one, but also because she had barely said a word. |
| Some time en route, May found time to give an interview to the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg. Would she like to say what kind of Brexit dividend Britain would be getting? Not really, the prime minister shrugged, because there probably wasn’t going to be one. Kuenssberg wasn’t getting the feelgood story she had been expecting. She tried another tack. Will Brexit be worth it? | Some time en route, May found time to give an interview to the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg. Would she like to say what kind of Brexit dividend Britain would be getting? Not really, the prime minister shrugged, because there probably wasn’t going to be one. Kuenssberg wasn’t getting the feelgood story she had been expecting. She tried another tack. Will Brexit be worth it? |
| “I think Brexit is going to deliver a country that will be different,” the prime minister said carefully. Kuenssberg tried to get her to expand on the nature of this difference. “I said the sky won’t fall in,” May continued, her software close to crashing, “but it will be different and it will be different.” She could hardly have sounded less enthusiastic about Brexit if she had tried. Off camera, her advisers were tearing their hair out. By the time she got back to London, even Jacob Rees-Mogg would be having second thoughts about the wisdom of leaving the EU. | “I think Brexit is going to deliver a country that will be different,” the prime minister said carefully. Kuenssberg tried to get her to expand on the nature of this difference. “I said the sky won’t fall in,” May continued, her software close to crashing, “but it will be different and it will be different.” She could hardly have sounded less enthusiastic about Brexit if she had tried. Off camera, her advisers were tearing their hair out. By the time she got back to London, even Jacob Rees-Mogg would be having second thoughts about the wisdom of leaving the EU. |
| The whole day might have gone rather better if the prime minister had stayed at home and sent Tony Blair out in her place. Instead the former Labour prime minister was to be found addressing a couple of hundred people at the UK in a Changing Europe conference where he laid out his Brexit agenda. Or Breggsit agenda, as he prefers to call it. | The whole day might have gone rather better if the prime minister had stayed at home and sent Tony Blair out in her place. Instead the former Labour prime minister was to be found addressing a couple of hundred people at the UK in a Changing Europe conference where he laid out his Brexit agenda. Or Breggsit agenda, as he prefers to call it. |
| Blair’s tragedy is that when he had the country’s trust, he dealt too often in half-truths and lies: and now he’s on the level, most of the country doesn’t believe a word he says. So if he had been heard on the national news channels saying we needed to be realistic about our global standing – Britain was now only a medium-sized player that had benefited from being part of one of the world’s biggest political alliances – then he would probably have convinced even the most ardent remainers that the UK was heading to be a global superpower. Breggsit: bring it on. Just show us the cliff edge and we’ll happily jump. | Blair’s tragedy is that when he had the country’s trust, he dealt too often in half-truths and lies: and now he’s on the level, most of the country doesn’t believe a word he says. So if he had been heard on the national news channels saying we needed to be realistic about our global standing – Britain was now only a medium-sized player that had benefited from being part of one of the world’s biggest political alliances – then he would probably have convinced even the most ardent remainers that the UK was heading to be a global superpower. Breggsit: bring it on. Just show us the cliff edge and we’ll happily jump. |
| There we had it. A prime minister who doesn’t believe in her own policies but is trying to persuade herself she does. And a former prime minister who did persuade himself he believed in what he was doing and now wishes he hadn’t. The state of Britain. The state of us. Three hundred and sixty five days and counting. | There we had it. A prime minister who doesn’t believe in her own policies but is trying to persuade herself she does. And a former prime minister who did persuade himself he believed in what he was doing and now wishes he hadn’t. The state of Britain. The state of us. Three hundred and sixty five days and counting. |
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