Resignation after all? While the British vote on Thursday, May 23, for the European elections, Prime Minister Theresa May may be packing. She was preparing to leave 10 Downing Street and would have decided to announce the date of her departure on the weekend, according to several British media, including the Times and the Guardian.
The head of the government has had another difficult week, after months of political pressure from all sides to take the door. Theresa May has indeed proposed Monday a "new" agreement on the exit of the European Union (EU) that seemed to have been concocted to please everyone. It had made social promises, offered the possibility of convening a new referendum and proposed an option to establish a transitional phase during which the United Kingdom would remain in a customs union with the EU. But his efforts only served to cement the front of the refusal in Parliament.
"Worst Prime Minister in a hundred years" ?
"These last minute concessions were really perceived by the deputies as the sign of a desperate Prime Minister who had no strategy," said Louise Thompson, a political scientist at the University of Manchester, contacted by France 24. This " The new agreement has therefore proved to be a false political step. One more.
Theresa May, indeed, had dug her own political tomb, one mistake after another. "Some conservatives now describe her as the worst prime minister of the last hundred years," said Andrew Rawnsley, one of the Guardian's leading political columnists. "It may be a little hard, especially in view of the huge challenge of Brexit, but we must admit that it has often been wrong," says Thompson.
For the political scientist, the Prime Minister's original sin was to have waited too long to advance the Brexit debate. "After triggering Article 50 [which starts the EU exit process, Ed] in March 2017, she did not provide any information to MEPs on her plan to exit the EU for months, if nothing happened, frustrating Parliament, "says Louise Thompson.
But it was not, as some British media have been able to say, the sign that Theresa May was heading straight into the wall of Brexit without strategy. "His goal was to unveil his plan as late as possible, focusing on the fact that the deputies, pressed for time, would prefer to vote for his proposal rather than risk an exit without agreement ['hard Brexit', Ed], analyzes the British political scientist.
Pleasure the bitter Brexit
The Prime Minister had identified the most ardent supporters of Brexit - Boris Johnson, Jacob Rees-Mogg or Dominic Raab - as the only ones able to overthrow his grand design. They were able to stand up to him even if he plunged the United Kingdom into the "hard Brexit". It is for this reason that she especially courted the right wing of his camp. This was his second big mistake: "Ignoring the 48% who voted against Brexit in the 2016 referendum, and not negotiating with the conservative moderate or the Labor, she missed the opportunity to bring out alternatives to his plan that could have won a majority in Parliament, "says Louise Thompson.
To have a Parliament in step, he also needed a comfortable majority. Hence the decision to hold an anticipated general election in June 2017. Theresa May, who was then popular in public opinion and whose authority over the Conservative Party was not disputed, thought that this vote would be a walk of health. She practically did not campaign. An erroneous analysis of the situation since the day after the election, the Conservatives lost seats, leaving it without a majority. "She did not understand how much voters wanted the Conservative Party to have organized a referendum that deeply divided the British society," said Louise Thompson.
The electoral rout of Theresa May already suggested the limits of her strategy. But the true revealer of its failure "was the second vote in Parliament on its withdrawal agreement on March 12, 2019," says Louise Thompson. For her, the first rejection in January, although historic in its magnitude, was not so surprising because the deputies, frustrated at being sidelined for so long, wanted to demonstrate both their disagreement with the text and with the method. But when they reaffirmed their opposition to the agreement two months later, it became clear that Theresa May had lost her initial bet. The deputies would not give in to avoid a hard Brexit.
"Theresa May then had no time to negotiate with the MPs an alternative proposal to her agreement," summarizes Louise Thompson. And since this second rejection, the Prime Minister has been stubborn, for lack of better, losing a little more credibility with each new failure. She is therefore likely to leave the political scene by the back door. But at least she will have found the way out ... unlike the UK, which is still looking for ways to get out of the EU.