RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: Mrs May has broken Brexit... now Brexit has broken her
                                                                                            
                                                                                            By 
Richard Littlejohn for the Daily Mail 
                                                                                            28 March 2019  
                                                                                             
                                                                                            Too little, too late. If 
Theresa May  had possessed a shred of decency, she should have resigned long ago.  Her authority was shot to pieces after her disastrous, self-inflicted  general election humiliation, which cost the Tories their majority and  ensured that the enemies of 
Brexit would prevail.
                                                                                            
                                                                                            She  had a second chance to do the decent thing last July when it became  apparent that her dismal, defeatist Chequers withdrawal agreement was a  shoddy betrayal of her oft-parroted mantra: ‘Brexit means Brexit.’
                                                                                            
                                                                                            Instead  of respecting the views of those who spoke for the 17.4 million people  who voted to leave the EU, she even threatened to confiscate the  ministerial cars of Cabinet dissenters and make them walk home.
                                                                                            
                                                                                            
	
	
	
		
		
		
			
		
		
	
	
                                                                                            If Theresa May (pictured leaving  the Houses of Parliament on Wednesday evening) had possessed a shred of  decency, she should have resigned long ago, writes Richard Littlejohn
                                                                                            
                                                                                            This  wasn’t the action of a strong, confident Prime Minister. It was a  petty, vindictive attempt at intimidation, worthy of Richmal Crompton’s  spoilt brat, Violet Elizabeth Bott, from the Just William books.
                                                                                            
                                                                                            If Theresa didn’t get her way, she was going to scream and scream and scream until she was sick.
                                                                                            
                                                                                            This  was the real Mrs May: aloof, stubborn, convinced of her own  self-righteousness, and contemptuous of others who begged to differ.
                                                                                            
                                                                                            The  idea that here was a woman who could unite the warring Conservative  factions was palpable nonsense. She has always had a reputation for  ignoring her colleagues, for treating them with lofty disdain.
                                                                                            
                                                                                            At the Home Office and No. 10, she preferred to defer to her civil servants rather than engage with fellow MPs.
                                                                                            
                                                                                            When  David Davis was Brexit Secretary, she undermined him by ordering her  favourite permanent secretary, Olly Robbins, a fanatical Remainer, to  draw up a much softer, alternative withdrawal strategy.
                                                                                            
                                                                                            
	
	
	
		
		
		
		
	
	
                                                                                            Theresa May speaks at the House of Commons ahead of votes on alternative Brexit options
                                                                                            
                                                                                            
	
	
	
		
		
		
		
	
	
                                                                                            When David Davis (pictured) was  Brexit Secretary, she undermined him by ordering her favourite permanent  secretary, Olly Robbins, a fanatical Remainer, to draw up a much  softer, alternative withdrawal strategy
                                                                                            
                                                                                            Her  bovine intransigence and constant interference forced both Davis and  his successor, Dominic Raab, to resign, along with Leave campaign  figurehead Boris Johnson.
                                                                                            
                                                                                            To lose one prominent Brexiteer may be considered unfortunate, to lose three in quick succession looked like deliberate policy.
                                                                                            
                                                                                            Regular  readers will need no reminding that I’ve never been a fan. Frankly,  she’s a pretty hopeless politician, serially over-promoted and with an  unwarranted sense of entitlement. Her reputation as a conciliator, a  safe pair of hands, is laughable.
                                                                                            
                                                                                            Don’t forget, when Tory chairman, she labelled her own party the ‘nasty party’, a toxic tag it took years to shed.
                                                                                            
                                                                                            At  the Home Office, she was responsible for the Windrush crisis, and  scrapping the police’s stop-and-search policy, which brought us the  epidemic of knife crime currently claiming teenage lives not just in  London but across the country.
                                                                                            
                                                                                            Remember,  too, that she also sent lorries into areas of high immigration, bearing  giant advertising hoardings advising foreigners living here illegally  to go home. What were you saying about the ‘nasty party’, Theresa?
                                                                                            
                                                                                            That  particular policy also helps explain her approach to Brexit and her  fatal misunderstanding of the motives of the millions of her fellow  citizens who voted Leave.
                                                                                            
                                                                                            She managed  to convince herself that the main reason Leave won was because people  had tired of unfettered immigration. She seems to have bought into the  narrative of fellow Remainers, who hold, insultingly, that Brexit voters  are thick racists who hate foreigners.
                                                                                            
                                                                                            
	
	
	
		
		
		
		
	
	
                                                                                            Prime Minister Theresa May leaves  10 Downing Street in central London for the weekly PMQ session in the  House of Commons last week
                                                                                            
                                                                                            So she  made ending free movement one of her famous ‘red lines’, reckoning that  if she could deliver a solemn promise to end immigration it would be  enough to satisfy the vast majority of Leavers.
                                                                                            
                                                                                            How little she understands the people she aspired to lead.
                                                                                            
                                                                                            Immigration  was certainly a factor, but overwhelmingly people wanted to be free of  the shackles of a corrupt foreign bureaucracy, to stop paying Danegeld  to Brussels, and to restore the sovereignty and independence of our  proud nation.
                                                                                            
                                                                                            It was this total lack of  comprehension which informed her inept, Quisling-style approach to the  withdrawal negotiations and allowed Jean-Claude Drunker and company to  run rings round her.
                                                                                            
                                                                                            Her ‘Brexit means Brexit’ and ‘No deal is better than a bad deal’ promises proved utterly worthless.
                                                                                            
                                                                                            While  shedding Brexiteers from her Cabinet, she tacked ever closer to those  determined to overturn the democratically expressed will of the British  people.
                                                                                            
                                                                                            As we now know beyond argument,  and as I have constantly maintained, the vast majority of the political  class have worked cynically to derail our departure and to keep us in  perpetuity as prisoners of a sclerotic European superstate. That process  culminated in the coup against the people which has been mounted by MPs  and was still being played out farcically in the Commons last night.
                                                                                            
                                                                                            Perhaps  all this could have been avoided if we’d had a stronger Prime Minister,  one who was determined to keep her word to respect the referendum  result, and not a Remainer whose heart was never in Brexit from Day One.
                                                                                            
                                                                                            But  at a crucial time in the negotiations, in a fit of hubris, she called a  general election — ‘not another one’ — and proceeded to make it all  about her. She soon discovered Britain wasn’t buying her ‘strong and  stable’ routine and the Tory majority disintegrated.
                                                                                            
                                                                                            The  election catastrophe was followed by the Chequers sell-out. That was  when she should have stood down and let someone else have a go at  salvaging a dignified Brexit from the wreckage of her shameful betrayal.
                                                                                            
                                                                                            
	
	
	
		
		
		
		
	
	
                                                                                            Theresa May (pictured), to her  eternal disgrace, has turned Britain, one of the world’s greatest  economies and military powers, into an international laughing stock
                                                                                            
                                                                                            But  she clung on, insisting that her ‘deal’ was the only show in town and  running down the clock to deny any further room for manoeuvre — at the  same time emboldening and enabling hardline Remoaners in her Cabinet to  defy collective responsibility in a blatant attempt to stop Brexit  altogether.
                                                                                            
                                                                                            You might not believe me,  but this is a commentary I’d rather not have written. Honestly, I’d love  to have been proven wrong about Mother Theresa.
                                                                                            
                                                                                            If  she’d kept her promises, if she hadn’t lied to the British people, if  she’d stood up to the EU and the wreckers of Continuity Remain, if she’d  delivered Brexit, I’d have cheered her to the rafters.
                                                                                            
                                                                                            But  she hasn’t. So what if the Brexiteers have finally admitted defeat and  swallowed her risible ‘deal’? It was a futile gesture, since the DUP  declined to follow suit.
                                                                                            
                                                                                            Even if it  does eventually hobble across the line, her deal isn’t what 17.4 million  people voted for by any stretch of the imagination.
                                                                                            It’s  a travesty. Whoever comes next — and it has to be someone who believes  in Leave — will have the devil’s own job trying to pick up the pieces.
                                                                                            
                                                                                            Mrs  May’s legacy is to have presided over three wasted years of  vacillation, obfuscation, cowardice, downright sabotage and the  destruction of a once-proud democracy, where MPs used to feel  honour-bound to represent the will of the people who paid their wages.
                                                                                            
                                                                                            Even  if many others share the blame for the dispiriting, depressing,  debauched state of British politics, she was the Prime Minister and she  must carry the can.
                                                                                            
                                                                                            Theresa May, to her  eternal disgrace, has turned Britain, one of the world’s greatest  economies and military powers, into an international laughing stock.
                                                                                            
                                                                                            She has broken Brexit. And now Brexit has broken her.
                                                                                            
                                                                                        
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/...JOHN-Mrs-broken-Brexit-Brexit-broken-her.html