Britain’s politics and story of a failed nation
The Brexit that Prime Minister Theresa May has tried to engineer, a product of the internal tensions of her own party, was doomed from the start. Coming to power as she did in the aftermath of the referendum, May made the one decision from which all her other missteps of the last few years would stem: she chose to represent one side, and one side only of the Brexit debate, and used this as the guiding star for her entire approach to Brexit.
Those three defeats, along with the humiliation of a string of Parliamentary defeats weakened her status as leader of the Conservative Party a viperous pit of politicians self-consumed in petty prevarications and unable to put their nation’s interests first. In mid-December 113 of them voted against her in a no-confidence motion, with the other 200 backing her if not wholeheartedly.
Whisper it in the corridors of Westminster, but there is still a world beyond Brexit. A world that includes the ‘real politik’ of Russia and China and Iran, of nation-state cyber warfare and scattered IS Jihadis, and of the infectious far-right hatred making headlines post-Christchurch. The self-obsessed Brexit intermission from the real world will come to an end, one way or another, and then the U.K. will need to face up to the consequences. As Theresa May’s Cabinet divides and revolts, as the majority of her MPs demand there are no more delays, and as the petition to revoke Article 50 passes 6 million signatures, every option remains on the table but none can yet command a majority in Parliament.
Time and EU patience is fast running out. As things stand, the Labour Party has finally secured an opinion poll lead, suggesting that combined with the abject chaos within the governing Conservative Party, the prospect of a Corbyn government is much more real than it has been before. Prime Minister Theresa May has agreed to an orderly resignation, but one that might be hastened by the ongoing civil war in her own party.
Rayhan Ahmed Topader
Writer, Columnist
London
