Terrific but overdue speech by Theresa May puts the rigid EU on the spot

When I wrote a series of opinion pieces headlined variously “Is May really up to it?” and “Can this farce get any worse?” and “Who will rid us of this appalling Prime Minister?” I might have given the impression that Theresa May is the most ill-starred occupant of Number 10 Downing Street since Anthony Eden thought it a clever idea to try a disastrous cloak and dagger operation at the Suez Canal with the aid of the French and Israel, to the fury of the Americans.

After that Eden had to go, and there have been plenty of moments since last year’s UK general election when it looked as though Theresa May would be removed as Tory leader. Those of us who have long lamented her strange lack of elementary curiosity, and her bizarre non-leadership style, found it almost baffling that May could remain in place at a critical historical juncture. The UK is trying to undertake one of the most difficult tasks since the Second World War yet it is doing it without the help of a strong leader who knows what they want and how to get it. Imagine a Churchill, Attlee or Thatcher dealing with Brexit.

My ultra-critical analysis was possibly wrong, one of her strongest female critics on the Tory benches, told me a few months ago. Even her critics admire her persistence. May just keeps going, she said. This is what she did as Home Secretary. May uses silence, wearing people down. Perhaps this is what she is doing on Brexit, with the cabinet and the EU, until both give up arguing and agree a deal, any deal, to make it stop. It might work, but it might not. We are all, in the next few years, about to find out.

This week it is working. The astonishingly resilient May is in moderate recovery mode. She duly put that small amount of political capital to particularly effective use, delivering a serious and substantial speech on Brexit on Friday.

There had to be some hard truths all round, she said. Neither side, in the UK or the EU, would get everything they want in the next stage of the negotiations and there would have to be British and EU compromises. The UK will be out of the Single Market, and the Customs Union, yet to get decent access to each other’s markets what is required is a system for recognising equivalent regulations and settling disputes between the UK and the EU in various industries that are key to both sides.

For all the talk of divergence by hardline Brexiteers, on goods most standards are set globally. There is zero interest in the UK diverging on car safety standards for example. Perhaps any hardline Brexiteers advocating it can explain how this would work?

The City and financial services are a different matter. The City, as I have bored people senseless saying for several years, powers the eurozone. It is a financial powerhouse, a giant hub of expertise, and its regulation simply cannot be sub-contracted to Brussels or Frankfurt. Why on earth would the British government agree to that?

With that reality in mind, the speech contained a welcome recognition that, with the Treasury and the Bank of England now largely aligned, the UK proposes a sensible compromise. There will be no more EU/UK “passporting”- always an overrated concept – and instead the British propose regulatory cooperation but self-government. The EU, whose eurozone depends on London for access to capital, would be best advised to face reality.

May’s speech could very easily have been a flop. In British politics this has been a week of speeches (rather old-fashioned and interesting) from leading figures and former leading figures. Sir John Major, the man who as Prime Minister whipped through the integrationist Maastricht treaty in the early 1990s, was reborn as the hero of the Remain movement, calling for a free vote (an unwhipped vote) in Parliament on Brexit and possibly a second referendum. There’s some cheek. Sir John did not offer up Maastricht as a free vote. The ultra-Remain position now seems to be that referendums are appalling devices, but let’s have another one to reverse Brexit before we abolish referendums for all time. Er, no thanks.

Then this week Tony Blair said something again too, although no-one can remember what. Lord Heseltine, former Deputy Prime Minister, was never off the television being Hezza-ish. And Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn gave a clever speech which should be read not just as an attempt to stay in a Customs Union. That’s all parliamentary tactics. Corbyn and his team are now thinking post-2019, realising that the battle there will be on delivering for the left behind, many of them Leave voters. The Corbynite pitch, as Alastair Benn wrote on Reaction this week, is targeted at Britain beyond Brexit, and the Tories should consider getting their act together.

Up against all that, a weak May could have bombed on a snowy Friday afternoon. Instead, her speech at the Mansion House in London on what the UK government seeks in terms of a future relationship with the EU was perfectly-pitched, and more detailed, thoughtful and realistic than anything offered by the government until this point. It was the winner of speech of the week in a week of speeches, the best thing she has said on this subject since becoming Prime Minister.

The temptation might have been to hit back hard against the EU, after its chief negotiator Michel Barnier overplayed his hand on the Irish border this week. May avoided it, sensibly. Even some ultra-remainers in the UK were offended by the assumption, mapped out in the EU’s draft withdrawal agreement, that Northern Ireland could be compelled to stay in the Customs Union and Single Market after Brexit. The EU was exposed as playing around with Irish politics. The British have centuries of experience of cocking up on Ireland. In respect of Ireland, the EU are a bunch of arrivistes.

May banked that advantage, and responded by being constructive. The Tory tribe is so exhausted, and worried by the intensity of its internal warfare perhaps letting in Corbyn, that the speech was welcomed across the spectrum, from Remainer to hardline Leaver. This does not – not – signify that the speech was meaningless or free of content. It illustrates that the Tories, or most of them, want a resolution, because of the consequences of there being no deal with only a year to go.

That’s the good news for the Tories. Now for the bad news. This speech was at least a year overdue and the amount of time wasted by the government  is shocking to the point of being a national disgrace. Throughout that time, the civil service – criticised by hardline headbangers – has battled away valiantly, and several ministers and whips have battled to hold it all together too. But it is still astonishing that with so little time remaining, Number 10 is only now  at a point where it is possible to describe the UK position as being clear and realistic.

The dithering means the EU can, justifiably, say that the British government has been so shambolic on this for so long that the EU cannot trust what is said. Unity among the 27 against the UK seems to be holding, for now, although there are fractures. Hungary’s Foreign Minister met Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson on Friday, and reminded everyone that the current European Commission – under Jean-Claude Juncker – will be remembered for losing as a member the EU’s second largest contributor and second or third most important economy, that is the UK.

In that context, what really counts is that May has finally and politely put the European Union on the spot and invited those in the 27 who think compromise should be possible to quietly apply pressure. All along, serious progress has been hampered by the boneheadedness of the British debate, combined with the rigidity of the EU and its obsession with a legal order that is a recent invention turned into institutional obsession accorded the status of biblical texts. May deserves credit for reasonably pointing out that solutions requiring some compromise and flexibility are called for and possible. The UK under May will compromise a little for the greater good if the EU will. Let’s hope it’s not too late.