London.
Historians and filmmakers alike know that the British revere leaders who defy Europe: Elizabeth I against Hapsburg Spain, Winston Churchill against Nazi Germany, and George III, had he not lost his mind just as Napoleon was rearranging the map of Continental Europe. The mythology of the island people who stand alone possesses imaginative appeal, but it obscures the historical reality.
The leaders of the past defied Europe from positions of relative weakness. Elizabeth I survived by deciding not to marry. George III’s prime minister, Pitt the Younger, built an alliance to the east to counterbalance Bonaparte’s empire in western Europe. Churchill was publicly defiant in June 1940 while privately begging Roosevelt for assistance.
Nobody reveres Theresa May. This is as it should be. Her performance as prime minister, judged by the traditional measure of whether she has carried out her election promises, has been lamentable. In fact, it is hard to tell if she has done anything at all to carry out the only electoral promise that matters, to guide Britain through the geopolitical obstacle course of the Brexit negotiations. True, she has clambered over the initial obstacles. But that is because she and her team surrendered over the “divorce bill”—the settling of Britain’s financial obligations to the European Union—and the “transition period,” which begins in March 2019.
These, though, were only the first skirmishes with Brussels. May surely did not want to lose them, but she could at least afford to. She cannot afford to lose the big battles, the inevitable confrontation over the freedom of movement of people, goods, and services. So far, nothing suggests that the differences between Britain and Brussels will be bridged by March 2019, unless Britain surrenders entirely. But the result of the 2016 Brexit referendum does not permit that, even if many Conservative MPs would quietly prefer it.
The British negotiating team wants to retain the economic advantages of EU membership but to dodge the onerous costs, such as paying into the EU treasury and having a land border with Turkey. The EU wants to make an example of the U.K., to dissuade debt defaulters in the South and nationalists in the East from thinking that they, too, can opt of the Union. As the EU leadership is not elected, it can pursue this hard line without asking the voters of Europe whether they want to sever links with Europe’s third-largest economy at a time when the post-2008 recovery is finally beginning. As the clock ticks, a hard landing for both sides becomes ever more likely.
Perhaps, though, we have been judging May by the wrong traditional measure. In terms of ordinary contractual politics, she has failed so far even to hold her cabinet together, let alone to persuade the European Union. But ever since the Brexit referendum of 2016, British politics has been extraordinary. At home, the social contract has been torn in half, with Remainers and Leavers divided by geography, demography, and the Hegelian questions of whether the nation-state has outlived its usefulness and whether foreigners can really be trusted. Abroad, Britain’s relations with Europe are in crisis. The economic future of the City of London, which is the only economic future Britain has apart from heritage tourism and the training of butlers, is uncertain.
When you look at May’s strategy in historical perspective, it begins to make sense. The British, the Bartleby among the nations, prefer not to surrender. Compared to the great crises of the past, their position may be unglamorous, but at least it is non-lethal. May, like her eminent predecessors, has assumed a defensive posture against an imperial tyrant on the European continent.
When Angela Merkel asked her what she wanted from the EU, May is said to have replied, “Make me an offer.” Merkel is reported to have been astounded, but then Merkel assumes that Germany and the EU are the stronger parties, and that, given the way Germany behaved in the 20th century, a contractual solution is the only acceptable one. Given the way that Britain behaved in the 20th century, however, it matters much less who is the strongest party, and much more who wants to survive on their own terms.
The Brexit supporters in the Conservative party believe that Britain can survive without the European Union and even prosper by intensifying trade with the United States, China, and India. The Brexit supporters among the public never really liked foreigners anyway. May was against Brexit before she was for it, but she is now publicly tied to the mast, so it is in her interest that the ship does not go down. One way or another, there will be Brexit. Hence her sub-Thatcherite dismissal of the notion of a second referendum.
The strategy of non-compliance buys time. According to the demented Hegelians who run the EU, time is on Brussels’ side, and the convergence of Europe’s nation states into an undemocratic superstate is historically inevitable. That might have been a good bet in the 1990s; indeed, even the British public seemed willing to wager their sovereignty on it in those distant days of Tony Blair. But convergence has been stalled since 2005. Macron and Merkel have responded to Brexit with a call for further convergence, but there is no appetite for it among the voters. One after another, the national publics have rejected the trading away of sovereignty, even as they appreciate the economic benefits of EU membership. Resistance to EU expansion in the East and South of the bloc means that May is no longer completely alone.
Time has also strengthened May’s domestic position. By bickering in public and briefing in private, her cabinet of rivals have made themselves look small and selfish. And the rise of Labour under Jeremy Corbyn seems to have stalled. In May’s darkest hour, the bungled election of 2017, the Conservatives still won more seats than any other party, and nearly secured a narrow majority. If that result represents the bottoming out of the Conservative vote, it now seems to represent the high point of support for Corbyn’s Labour.
The allegation this week that Corbyn and other hard-left Labour figures had socialized with Czech spies during the Cold War was another dividend for May. On Monday, she called for Corbyn to authorize the release of his Stasi file. Labour are just as divided over Brexit as the Conservative are, but the revolutionary zeal of Corbyn’s cadre, and the exploitation of May’s difficulties, have saved Labour from its own Brexit reckoning.
As time passes, the British seem to be adjusting to the new normal of post-Brexit uncertainty. The Conservatives still lead Labour in the polls. So long as May make the right defiant noises to placate pro-Brexit Conservatives and the pro-Brexit press, she will continue to lead the party. Someone, after all, has to carry the can for Brexit, whether that can contains a deal or nothing at all. Time is on her side—at least, that is, until March 2019.
