Yesterday, Theresa May spoke. The world was all ears, ready to lap up her long-awaited Brexit strategy announcement. Today, it is responding to what she said. Reactions have been mixed.
The right wing press in Britain is beside itself with glee because of the Prime Minister’s ‘bold Brexit stance’. May is the Daily Mail’s new darling. On the paper’s front page this morning TM was heralded as a reincarnation of the only other female Prime Minister we've ever had: the one and only MT. ‘Steel Of The New Iron Lady’ read the Mail's headline. A pretty lazy comparison for many reasons, not least because Theresa May’s stance on Brexit is an outright undoing of much of Thatcher’s work on Europe. As if that wasn’t enough the accompanying picture was a cartoon of May standing defiantly on what appear to be the white cliffs of Dover, looking out over the channel with hands on hips after having torn down the EU flag and raised the Union Jack. Not just the iron lady 2.0, it seems May is also a one-woman border patrol now too. ‘Don’t worry guys’, the Daily Mail is saying, to us with this front page, ‘nothing has been decided, nothing is certain and this could still go horribly wrong but Theresa May talks a good game and she’s not one of those “remoaners” who tells the truth about how bloody problematic the mess we helped to create is…’
‘It’s My Way or the Highway’ said City AM, ‘Don’t Call Me May-be’ the Metro punned and the Sun got biblical with the headline: BREXODUS: PM’s 12 Commandments’.
Elsewhere in Europe the portrayal of May wasn’t quite so celebratory. The German paper, Die Welt, ran with a picture of May and a mocking headline which read: ‘Little Britain’. Others opted to focus on the hard line nature of her stance, Denmark’s leading broadsheet Politiken went with a headline that read ‘Brits slam the door hard on the EU’.
Closer to home, the reception of May’s speech in Ireland was also mixed. The Republic of Ireland is part of the EU while Northern Ireland remains part of the United Kingdom. Once we leave the EU the issue of the Ireland/Northern Ireland border could become problematic. This so something that May has failed to address despite serious implications for people on both sides of the Irish border, despite the obvious implication of her insistence that Britain will leave the single market and customs union being that it will have to be addressed at some point.
And therein lies the rub. The right wing British press might celebrate Theresa May’s hard line ‘deal or no deal’ approach to Brexit. However, while there’s no doubt that she’s doing a sterling job as Prime Minister in representing the will of the 17,410,742 million people who voted to leave the European Union there’s nothing but tumbleweed for the 16,141,241 million people who voted remain. I guess 'Prime Minister respects the will of some of the people' doesn't quite have the same ring to it?
Theresa May’s government are in negotiating mode, so it’s their prerogative to be firm and ferocious. They must project confidence and play hard ball, that’s their only option. Right now, though, the Mail’s cartoon is an accurate representation of the truth: this is nothing more than a sketch. It’s political posturing on a grand scale, projecting a positive mental attitude and grandiose faking it until she makes it on the Prime Minister’s part. She can give speeches about what she wants to happen but what actually happens has yet to be decided. As with everything, the devil is going to be in the detail of the deal and we don’t have a deal yet. Yep, that’s right. We still don’t really know what’s going on but don’t let the ‘facts’ get in the way of a good patriotic front page.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.