All politics aspires to the condition of entertainment. At least it does so these days, whether in London or in Washington. The British derive enjoyment from their national dramas, even when things go wrong—Dunkirk was the film of the summer. But that multi-series extravaganza known as Brexit makes increasingly uncomfortable viewing. If the Brexiteers ever had a script, the government of Theresa May has long since wandered off it.
For whose who missed October’s first episode, a short recap. The Conservative party conference was a disaster. Theresa May, the leading lady, was upstaged by Boris Johnson, her foreign secretary, who announced his terms for Brexit just before the party convened. May kept dancing like the plucky hoofer she is, but she ended up on her backside during her conference speech. First, a professional comedian commandeered the stage and purported to hand her her unemployment notice on Johnson’s behalf. Then her big number was ruined by a most unprofessional attack of coughing and wheezing.
Early in her short and disastrous tenure in Downing Street, May sported a theatrical pair of leopard-print shoes. These days, The Red Shoes seem more appropriate. Determined to dance until she drops, she keeps the footwork going, and all the time she spins faster and faster towards the edge. She leads a minority government. Her cabinet seethes with rivalry. Some ministers are pulling for Brexit and others for Remain. Many on both sides are whispering noises off to the press. The House of Commons has attached some 300 objections, queries, and bear traps to the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill, to be resolved in committee. No date has been set for the committee to meet.
“One more crisis, and she’s gone,” a pro-Brexit observer told me last week. “We don’t know what it’ll be, but it can’t be long.”
The European Union’s negotiators have done their best to weaken May further. The first stage of Brexit negotiations has been unproductive and sour. In September, Jean-Claude Juncker, the head of the EU Commission, questioned the “stability and accountability” of May’s Brexit negotiator, David Davis. When May laid out some negotiating positions in a speech in Florence, an anonymous EU official complained about her “wordy and unclear” terms. So no one saw the double plot twist coming on October 21.
May went to Brussels for what was expected to be another fruitless summit of the EU Council. A photographer caught her sitting alone and pensive at the negotiating table, seemingly out in the Euro-cold. Instead, the EU broke the deadlock and began a slow move to the second stage of Brexit negotiations, by offering to start internal discussions on trade terms, perhaps even as a prelude to negotiations with Britain in December.
“EU leaders throw Theresa May a lifeline on Brexit trade,” said the papers. Unfortunately for her, Jean-Claude Juncker was holding the other end. The next day, the German broadsheet Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) carried an extensive leak from Juncker’s team, allegedly describing Juncker’s dinner with May earlier that week.
“May did not give up. She begged for help,” the source claimed. She reminded Juncker of her recent offer of flexibility over the financial settlement with the EU, and a two-year “transitional period” after 2019, to avoid the “hard Brexit” that she was once prepared to risk. “And she let them know that her friend and her enemy”—chancellor Philip Hammond and foreign secretary Boris Johnson—“are sitting at the back of her neck. She said she had no room for maneuver.”
This might be May making the best of her domestic position, as head of a weak government that no one wants to topple—at least not just yet. But the FAZ leak implied she was physically and mentally weak. She seemed “anxious” to Juncker, “despondent and dismayed,” “tormented,” and “drawn from the struggle with her own party.” She has “deep rings under her eyes,” and “looks like someone who doesn’t sleep through the night.” Once, the “laughter literally poured out of her.” Now, she uses all her strength “to avoid losing her temper.”
Juncker made May sound like Vanessa Redgrave in Agatha, in which she played Agatha Christie having a nervous breakdown. Juncker’s own performance is closer to that of the abusive husband in Gaslight. Confident that she cannot bring herself to leave Downing Street, Juncker is trying to weaken May, to humiliate her into total dependency. It is an ugly, bullying spectacle—a reminder, in fact, that the arrogance of the EU leadership was one of the reasons the British voted to leave the union.
Juncker could not have seen a further twist of the plot. Connoisseurs of the afternoon soap opera will be familiar with the character of the uncle or cousin who emigrated years ago and is heard from occasionally, in case the script writers need to “work the story round,” as Dickens used to say. The fall of Harvey Weinstein has rippled from the hotels of Hollywood to the Palace of Westminster. This is not as long a distance as it sounds; as the saying goes, politics is show business for ugly people. Then again, the Weinstein affair reveals how show business is also show business for ugly people.
By the afternoon of October 30, Conservative party staff had compiled a list of 36 Conservative MPs alleged to have behaved inappropriately towards their female staff. Mark Garnier, the minister for international trade, is said to have called his secretary “sugar tits” and to have sent her shopping for sex toys. The former cabinet minister Stephen Crabb, who is 44, married, and a vocal Christian, has admitted to sending “explicit” text messages to a 19-year-old woman after turning down her application to work in his office. The Times of London has reported that the names of other cabinet ministers appear on the list.
Theresa May has written to John Bercow, the speaker of the House, saying that sexual harassment in Parliament “cannot be tolerated any longer.” This is an infelicitous wording, for it implies that she, like every other member of Parliament, has tolerated it previously. Her aides are insisting that she will fire any cabinet minister against whom accusations are substantiated. The chances are, however, that most of the substantiations will be made in the press, not the courts. If the scandal grows, the press will have the government on the run—and the Labour party, too, for similar allegations are swirling around the followers of Jeremy Corbyn.
And grow the scandal surely will. Labour or Conservative, British politics is a boys’ club. Walk around Westminster in the evenings, and you will see male MPs tottering drunkenly in the streets, often in the company of younger women. The only surprise in the allegations so far is that only two Conservative MPs are named as users of prostitutes. Miraculously, only one MP has thus far been described as a habitual drunk with wandering hands.
In 2009, when it emerged that many MPs were systematically fiddling their expenses, there were firings, disciplinary proceedings, and the refund of government monies that had been diverted to urgent necessities like garden ponds and kitchen makeovers. The British public tend not to pay much attention to politics, but they are highly vindictive when they do. In February, a YouGov poll found that while pro-Remain and pro-Brexit voters may divide over the country’s future, they are united in the conviction that their elected representatives are scoundrels. Politicians are the least-trusted professionals in Britain. Even the word of a weather forecaster is considered more reliable.
If the allegations of endemic sexual misconduct are true, Theresa May will not be able to appeal to the public. And if Jean-Claude Juncker is to be believed, she cannot appeal to her cabinet either. She leads a minority government and governs only with the support of the social conservatives of the Democratic Unionist party. The names of 1 in 10 of her MPs are on the list of alleged offenders. The fate of Brexit, the most important episode in Britain’s postwar history, may turn on a tabloid drama.
Dominic Green, a fellow of the Royal Historical Society, is a frequent contributor to THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
