Seconds out, round … frankly, who cares? Everyone’s either lost count or, if they’re lucky, lost the will to live. The latest episode in the ongoing Brexit psychodrama, Who’s Afraid of the ERG?, featuring Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn as the self-harming, lack-of-power couple united in their inability to utter a coherent sentence, took place at the Confederation of British Industry’s annual conference in London. No one was holding their breath for a meaningful resolution.
The prime minister did go into the day as the home-crowd favourite. Having initially declared that any form of Brexit would be damaging for business, the CBI has recently rather rolled over. Faced with the prospect of a no-deal Brexit, it has come to the conclusion that the prime minister’s bad deal is the only game in town. Rather than campaign for what it really wants, it has taken the easy option of the certainty of everything being worse than it currently is but not as crap as it might be.
May was greeted from the stage as some kind of messiah. Or at least a symbol of dogged resilience in the face of almost certain defeat. “Let’s give the prime minister a very warm CBI welcome,” said John Allan, the group’s president, doing his best to whip up enthusiasm. The audience more or less obliged. With May it’s usually best to get the applause in first, as so often there’s little to clap at the end. Today being another case in point.
Right from the off, May looked tired. Battered, even. She may be deriving some masochistic pleasure from facing down the rapidly vanishing ERG, but it’s taking its toll. Her delivery was brittle, staccato, with no attempt to connect with the crowd. The conference was just another chore in another unpleasant day and she raced through her speech at breakneck speed. Starting with Brexit.
The deal was the deal. Take it or leave it. It was the best she could do under the circumstances, and people shouldn’t get too hung up on how bad the withdrawal agreement was because the real prize was to be found in the seven-page appendix outlining the future trading relationship with the EU. OK, so it was a bit on the thin side at the moment, but she hoped to add a few more pages of legally meaningless waffle in the next week or so. A few who had come to the conference in search of reassurance began to look seriously concerned.
Then the prime minister doubled down on immigration. After Brexit we were going to allow wealthy visitors from the US into the country through e-gates, but we’d be making sure that all low-paid workers from the EU would no longer be able to jump the queue. It was far better that patients should die rather than allow scroungers from the EU to come to the UK to fill thousands of NHS vacancies.
Understandably, this didn’t go down too well with some delegates, and the owner of the hotel in which the conference was being held stood up to say he was having enough trouble getting staff already. May tilted her head to one side, as she always does when under pressure, and gave him a non-committal answer. Nor was there any relief thereafter, as the next questioner turned out to be a hardline Brexiter intent on rubbishing the withdrawal agreement. Some members of the audience booed, and May barely concealed her anger. Her reply bordered on a straight “piss off”. As soon as was indecently possible, she made a dash for the exit.
Late in the afternoon it was Corbyn’s turn. By his standards it was a decent speech. Though he still tends to confuse his listeners by placing the emphasis on the wrong words like a straggler in a remedial reading class, he successfully demolished the government’s Brexit negotiations as pitiful and made Labour’s case for changes in working practices to deal with the causes of Brexit.
But the CBI delegates just weren’t that interested. They didn’t want to hear inconvenient truths that might demand something of them. They preferred the strange, isolated woman who had talked to them earlier. The one they could admire for her steadfastness in the face of imminent disaster. That was the British way. Heroic failure in the face of impossible odds. And what was May if not the brightest and second best?
