Predictably, there was always going to be a point when Theresa May’s critics would declare that her honeymoon as Prime Minister had ended. Such is the vicious world of politics.
And so this week’s resignation of Sir Ivan Rogers, Britain’s ambassador to the EU, has been identified as marking that moment...
PETER OBORNE on politics and power: A crude hatchet job on Mrs May and a cynical bid to stop Brexit
By Peter Oborne For The Daily Mail
7 January 2017
The Daily Mail
Predictably, there was always going to be a point when Theresa May’s critics would declare that her honeymoon as Prime Minister had ended. Such is the vicious world of politics.
And so this week’s resignation of Sir Ivan Rogers, Britain’s ambassador to the EU, has been identified as marking that moment.
Giving fuel to the PM’s critics, he walked out of his job in a huff, launching an intemperate broadside against Mrs May, whom he accused of ‘muddled thinking’ on Brexit.
As day follows night, The Economist magazine, which has a global circulation of 1.4 million and was one of David Cameron’s most enthusiastic cheerleaders, seized its chance to declare war.
The front page of its current issue carries the bleak headline ‘Theresa Maybe: Britain’s indecisive premier’, accompanied by a funereal black-and-white photo of her.
Theresa May’s critics are declaring that her honeymoon as Prime Minister had ended
Its accompanying cover story can only be described as an unscrupulous, unsubtle and partisan hatchet job.
Mrs May is portrayed as ‘thin-skinned’, ‘struggling’, having made a ‘shaky start’ and goes so far as to absurdly suggest she may be ousted by her own party if she fails on Brexit.
I’m convinced that this sort of character assassination has been planned for some time by powerful interests at the heart of the British Establishment who are determined to threaten stopping Brexit.
For the fact is that many bankers, bureaucrats and those with strong pro-Brussels links are adamant that the decision made by the British people last June will be reversed.
And The Economist is beloved by the pro-EU establishment.
Significantly, the largest shareholder of the 173-year-old periodical is Italy’s Agnelli family, founders of the Fiat car empire.
The Economist has a brother-in-arms in its battle against Brexit — the Financial Times. It, too, is foreign-owned — by the Japanese conglomerate Nikkei, which has no loyalties to this country — and is well-read in Brussels, the City and in the financial markets.
But The Economist’s evisceration of Mrs May marks one of the most intellectually shoddy pieces of journalism I have ever read.
The leading article claims that Mrs May has ‘sidelined’ the Treasury
The truth is very different.
Let me consider its claims.
First, it calls on the PM to start ‘accepting dissent’ and ‘seeking alternative opinions’.
And yet the author goes on to contradict that assumption by describing how the Cabinet does conduct ‘open discussions in which the Prime Minister really listens’.
There are other serious errors of fact. It refers, for instance, to Lord O’Neill, who resigned from the Government in September, as a ‘senior minister’.
In fact, he was as junior a minister as it is possible to be, holding the rank of under-secretary of state for a mere three months. The leading article also claims that Mrs May has ‘sidelined’ the Treasury. Yet no evidence is provided for this assertion.
The Economist also crucially fails to mention the fact that in the view of almost all civil servants and insiders, the relationship between the Treasury and 10 Downing Street is healthier than it has been for at least two decades.
This is because under both Gordon Brown and then George Osborne, the Treasury became overmighty. Indeed, one of Mrs May’s biggest achievements has been to bring it back into balance with the rest of Whitehall.
In all my discussions with civil servants, I have never come across any suggestion that the Treasury feels ‘sidelined’. If The Economist can’t offer any evidence to substantiate its mischievous claim, I challenge it to apologise for what I believe to be a confected and mendacious contention.
In sum, the report was not impartial political analysis. It was a particularly execrable example of what Bill Clinton used to call the ‘politics of personal destruction’.
In any case, no one should be influenced by this cynical attempt to damage Theresa May, since The Economist has a long and wretched record of misjudging political events.
The Economist wrote off Donald Trump's chances declaring Hillary Clinton to be ‘unstoppable’
It favoured Edward Heath over Margaret Thatcher in the 1975 Tory leadership contest. In 1989, it argued the case for what turned out to be Britain’s calamitous entry into the Exchange Rate Mechanism (the precursor to the deeply flawed euro single currency). Its writers banged the drum for the Iraq War.
Then, not learning from that heinous mistake, they were cheerleaders for David Cameron’s disastrous intervention in Libya.
The ineluctable truth is that over the past few years The Economist has been wrong on most of the great issues of our time.
It wrote off the chances of Donald Trump — declaring Hillary Clinton to be ‘unstoppable’. When the referendum on the EU came, The Economist snootily dismissed scepticism from Brexiteers about apocalyptic Treasury economic forecasts as ‘sneers’, and warned official predictions of a downturn could actually be ‘too optimistic’.
So, is its sudden attack on Theresa May a case of sour grapes, or just another example of its hopeless political judgment?
For her part, I’m sure she is not too bothered by this attack from such witless Euro-fanatics. Indeed, she would actually have been worried if The Economist had come out in her support. But, that said, she should brace herself for more attacks.
Theresa May will have to deal with a great deal of such ill-informed and insidious assaults from within the heart of a bankrupt British establishment as she prepares to take Britain out of the EU.
And so this week’s resignation of Sir Ivan Rogers, Britain’s ambassador to the EU, has been identified as marking that moment...
PETER OBORNE on politics and power: A crude hatchet job on Mrs May and a cynical bid to stop Brexit
By Peter Oborne For The Daily Mail
7 January 2017
The Daily Mail
Predictably, there was always going to be a point when Theresa May’s critics would declare that her honeymoon as Prime Minister had ended. Such is the vicious world of politics.
And so this week’s resignation of Sir Ivan Rogers, Britain’s ambassador to the EU, has been identified as marking that moment.
Giving fuel to the PM’s critics, he walked out of his job in a huff, launching an intemperate broadside against Mrs May, whom he accused of ‘muddled thinking’ on Brexit.
As day follows night, The Economist magazine, which has a global circulation of 1.4 million and was one of David Cameron’s most enthusiastic cheerleaders, seized its chance to declare war.
The front page of its current issue carries the bleak headline ‘Theresa Maybe: Britain’s indecisive premier’, accompanied by a funereal black-and-white photo of her.
Theresa May’s critics are declaring that her honeymoon as Prime Minister had ended
Its accompanying cover story can only be described as an unscrupulous, unsubtle and partisan hatchet job.
Mrs May is portrayed as ‘thin-skinned’, ‘struggling’, having made a ‘shaky start’ and goes so far as to absurdly suggest she may be ousted by her own party if she fails on Brexit.
I’m convinced that this sort of character assassination has been planned for some time by powerful interests at the heart of the British Establishment who are determined to threaten stopping Brexit.
For the fact is that many bankers, bureaucrats and those with strong pro-Brussels links are adamant that the decision made by the British people last June will be reversed.
And The Economist is beloved by the pro-EU establishment.
Significantly, the largest shareholder of the 173-year-old periodical is Italy’s Agnelli family, founders of the Fiat car empire.
The Economist has a brother-in-arms in its battle against Brexit — the Financial Times. It, too, is foreign-owned — by the Japanese conglomerate Nikkei, which has no loyalties to this country — and is well-read in Brussels, the City and in the financial markets.
But The Economist’s evisceration of Mrs May marks one of the most intellectually shoddy pieces of journalism I have ever read.
The leading article claims that Mrs May has ‘sidelined’ the Treasury
The truth is very different.
Let me consider its claims.
First, it calls on the PM to start ‘accepting dissent’ and ‘seeking alternative opinions’.
And yet the author goes on to contradict that assumption by describing how the Cabinet does conduct ‘open discussions in which the Prime Minister really listens’.
There are other serious errors of fact. It refers, for instance, to Lord O’Neill, who resigned from the Government in September, as a ‘senior minister’.
In fact, he was as junior a minister as it is possible to be, holding the rank of under-secretary of state for a mere three months. The leading article also claims that Mrs May has ‘sidelined’ the Treasury. Yet no evidence is provided for this assertion.
The Economist also crucially fails to mention the fact that in the view of almost all civil servants and insiders, the relationship between the Treasury and 10 Downing Street is healthier than it has been for at least two decades.
This is because under both Gordon Brown and then George Osborne, the Treasury became overmighty. Indeed, one of Mrs May’s biggest achievements has been to bring it back into balance with the rest of Whitehall.
In all my discussions with civil servants, I have never come across any suggestion that the Treasury feels ‘sidelined’. If The Economist can’t offer any evidence to substantiate its mischievous claim, I challenge it to apologise for what I believe to be a confected and mendacious contention.
In sum, the report was not impartial political analysis. It was a particularly execrable example of what Bill Clinton used to call the ‘politics of personal destruction’.
In any case, no one should be influenced by this cynical attempt to damage Theresa May, since The Economist has a long and wretched record of misjudging political events.
The Economist wrote off Donald Trump's chances declaring Hillary Clinton to be ‘unstoppable’
It favoured Edward Heath over Margaret Thatcher in the 1975 Tory leadership contest. In 1989, it argued the case for what turned out to be Britain’s calamitous entry into the Exchange Rate Mechanism (the precursor to the deeply flawed euro single currency). Its writers banged the drum for the Iraq War.
Then, not learning from that heinous mistake, they were cheerleaders for David Cameron’s disastrous intervention in Libya.
The ineluctable truth is that over the past few years The Economist has been wrong on most of the great issues of our time.
It wrote off the chances of Donald Trump — declaring Hillary Clinton to be ‘unstoppable’. When the referendum on the EU came, The Economist snootily dismissed scepticism from Brexiteers about apocalyptic Treasury economic forecasts as ‘sneers’, and warned official predictions of a downturn could actually be ‘too optimistic’.
So, is its sudden attack on Theresa May a case of sour grapes, or just another example of its hopeless political judgment?
For her part, I’m sure she is not too bothered by this attack from such witless Euro-fanatics. Indeed, she would actually have been worried if The Economist had come out in her support. But, that said, she should brace herself for more attacks.
Theresa May will have to deal with a great deal of such ill-informed and insidious assaults from within the heart of a bankrupt British establishment as she prepares to take Britain out of the EU.
