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Theresa May’s Brexit speech today was a doubly depressing event. It was a reality check for those who hope the UK can stay in the single market at the same time as leaving the European Union. But it was riddled with its own streak of global fantasy. It was a reminder that Britain’s exit from the EU puts livelihoods, values and alliances at risk. Yet it was also shot through with unsupported optimism about UK economic performance, trade prospects and the readiness of the remaining EU-27 to strike the kind of deal that would suit the UK government.
Whatever else she may be, Mrs May is not a sentimental politician. Her speech had no time for the EU’s historic achievements – nor indeed its failings. Instead it began from the core domestic political reality of the moment as the prime minister perceives it. “A little over six months ago,” as she put it at the outset, “the British people voted for change.” That vote for change cannot be denied. It was what brought Mrs May to 10 Downing Street in July. The entire speech made crystal clear that she is not going to waste her moment by hanging on to the European past or by pretending that leave means anything except leave.
Mrs May’s approach is hardened by three other large realities, as she sees them. The first is her conviction that the people voted for Brexit to control EU migration. The speech carefully placed the section on migration midway through the text, so as not to seem too provocative. Politically, though, migration was the starting point. Brexit, Mrs May said, “must mean control of the number of people who come to Britain from Europe”. That means Britain will leave the EU single market, because free movement of labour is one of the pillars of that market. Migration control and the single market are incompatible. Many have been in denial on this. Some still are. Mrs May is not, though the economic and human consequences could be, and probably will be, grim.
The second reality is that the Conservative party’s anti-European MPs are politically stronger, and thus more of a destabilising threat to her premiership, than the party’s pro-Europeans. The last three Conservative prime ministers have all fallen over Europe, and Mrs May is determined, not unreasonably in some respects, not to become the fourth. Her speech was therefore designed in equal parts to pander to the xenophobic press, and to keep backbench Brexiters firmly on side. True, there was an important announcement about a vote for MPs and there were significant softenings of tone compared with Mrs May’s party conference speech – for instance in language about Europeans as allies, about diversity as positive not negative, about respect for workers’ rights, and in making clear that EU citizens are welcome here. All the same, the speech explicitly ruled out the remainers’ central demand to stay in the single market.
As a political manoeuvre, today was a huge success for Mrs May. [...] This speech has strengthened Mrs May’s authority both in her party and in the country.
It is less easy for Mrs May to turn the third reality to her advantage. That’s because this would involve the politically inconvenient need to acknowledge that the EU-27 and the European institutions will have a legitimate and perhaps decisive role in the deal Britain seeks. Mrs May talked about compromise, and she said it was important for many sectors of the UK economy – she name-checked several besides the City of London – to retain access to the single market. But she was confrontational too, saying that no deal would in the end be better than a bad deal. That will play well in the Europhobic press. But it is a bluff. It may backfire at the negotiating table, especially as she looks for the transitional implementation deal she rightly committed to seeking. Mrs May is a politician who needs to preside over a growing, not a failing, economy by the time of the first post-Brexit general election. The decision to allow migration to trump the single market may seem hard-headed, but it makes that goal less easy to achieve.