Nice, nice, nice,
nice, nice, nice.
Theresa May has set a
date for her departure
as prime minister.
Verdicts and judgments
on her period in office
are going to be flooding
in over the next few days.
It's certainly the case that she
was set an impossible problem
with delivering Brexit, but she
made that problem immeasurably
harder for herself
by her failure
to communicate her own
strategy for doing so.
Brexit means Brexit, and we're
going to make a success of it.
She started off as
an imperious figure
going out to bat for Britain,
and get a great deal,
and show strength
rather than weakness.
She ended up arguing
for compromise.
If you're going to
do that you have
to start off arguing
for compromise,
not get there at the end.
In order to get the
best deal for Britain
we need to ensure we've got that
strong and stable leadership.
In the end she's been let
down by her shortcomings
as a political tactician
and a political operator,
as much as by the complexity of
the situation that she faced.
Her game plan was
to deliver Brexit,
to get a deal with
the European Union,
and to keep the
Conservative party together
at the same time.
These three things were
very, very hard to reconcile.
So what comes next?
Well there's going to be a
Conservative party leadership
election.
It's going to start the
week of June the 10th.
It'll be whittled down
to a shortlist of two
by MPs over the
course of that week,
and then Conservative
party members
will choose the successor.
Do you think you're too divisive
a character to be Tory leader?
The front-runner to
succeed her will certainly
be Boris Johnson, the former
foreign secretary and leading
figure in the Leave campaign.
But the Conservative
party has a track record
of not picking
its front-runners,
and this is going to be
a very, very large field,
so you certainly can't
take it for granted
that he's going to emerge
as the winner in the end.
So where does this
actually leave the issue
of Brexit, the issue
that has fundamentally
brought down Theresa May?
The obvious immediate
conclusion is
that it makes a no-deal
exit more likely,
but that's not the same
as making it definite.
None of the candidates
are actually
going to advocate a no-deal
Brexit, but what they will say
is that they are prepared to see
a no-deal Brexit if they can't
get the right deal for Britain.
And in particular, that means
junking the hated Northern
Ireland backstop
designed to create
a frictionless border
between Northern Ireland
and the Republic of Ireland.
The fundamental problem
with going down that path
remains the hostility
of the House of Commons,
which does not want to
see a no-deal Brexit.
It is true that
constitutionally it's
very hard to stop a prime
minister set on doing this,
but there are ways, including
a vote of confidence designed
to bring down the government.
That would require some
Conservatives being
ready to bring down their
party in order to prevent this,
but there are a handful who
might be prepared to do that.
And the Conservatives will
know that a general election
at this time is not
a welcome prospect.
They will all be
very scared of it.
And none of them will want
to elect a leader who's
going to plunge them
into a general election
very soon, especially
after what we
expect to be catastrophic
European parliamentary
elections.
We get the results Sunday
night and Monday morning.
They're almost certain
to be the worst
results the Conservative
party have ever
had in any election ever.
It will be for my successor to
seek a way forward that honours
the result of the referendum.
To succeed, he or she will
have to find consensus
in parliament, where I have not.
Such a consensus
can only be reached
if those on all
sides of the debate
are willing to compromise.
The most interesting part
of Theresa May's resignation
speech in Downing
Street was where
she said that the
next leader is going
to have to proceed in
the spirit of compromise.
They're going to have
to find a compromise.
And that was very interesting
because the party clearly
is in no mood to
compromise over Brexit.
The leader may have changed but
the parliamentary arithmetic
and the problems have not.
