Theresa May must stop dithering about Brexit – we voted out, now ignore the preachy Remoaners and get on with it
JUST get on with it! That is the consistent message from Leave voters up and down the country.
For such people, it’s simple: “There was a vote, the Leave side won and now the UK has to leave the EU. No ifs or buts.”
It’s an instruction that our MPs would do well to heed, and one that permeates all the findings from a fascinating series of focus groups that I have been shown.
Change Britain, a new Eurosceptic campaign, has been speaking to voters in Yorkshire, the Midlands, the North East and North West.
One of the most striking findings is the complete absence of any buyers’ remorse.
Those who voted to quit the EU are happy, their frustration stems purely from the stalling of the Brexit process and finger-wagging, preachy Remainers saying it can’t be done.
Many have been supportive of Theresa May, who is saying the right things, but patience is wearing thin.
Many are demanding “a plan” and some “action”. Plenty are upset at the lack of communication, smelling a rat.
There is a widespread suspicion that a deeply untrustworthy establishment is preparing to sell them out.
The tragic, explosive reality is that ordinary Leave voters are right — Brexit is on the verge of going badly wrong, even though the economy has been astonishingly resilient since the vote.
The Remainers are on the march, with Tony Blair and his vast financial and human resources returning to the fray, the legal complications relating to Article 50 are becoming ridiculously onerous and foreign leaders are making the most of our divided, unsettled establishment to humiliate Britain as often as possible.
Barack Obama’s infamous intervention before the referendum backfired. It is a fair bet that the Maltese prime minister who wants the UK to “be worse off” or the Polish foreign minister who said we may never leave the EU will have driven many into an even greater rage.
Angela Merkel’s decision to block any fast-track deal over European expats was a seminal moment this week, as was the news that some lawyers believe that the Supreme Court could yet allow Scotland or even the European Court of Justice to have the final say over Article 50.
The reason so many Remainers now feel able openly to undermine Brexit is because the Government has allowed itself to portray Britain as a supplicant, a divided, rudderless country.
To European diplomats it looks as if our Government’s heart is not really in this and that our strategy is purely defensive, a bid to retain as close links to the EU as possible.
Many leading pro-Brexit activists and MPs are furious, even though they remain loyal to the Prime Minister.
The first obvious signs of Eurosceptics flexing their muscles came in the form of a letter by 60 Tory backbench MPs demanding a clean or “hard” Brexit, complete with withdrawal from the single market and the customs union.
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Change Britain has already signed up close to 50,000 supporters.
Its best recruiting day was when the Government lost its case in the High Court.
Staffed by Vote Leave alumni, Change Britain is rebuilding a network of ground campaign teams and organisers across the UK. The stalls and leafleting have restarted, as has the digital and social media push.
Crucially, the next action day in December will target constituencies of anti-Brexit MPs.
Ukip may be in a parlous financial state but the ability of new leader Paul Nuttall to connect with ex-Labour working class and lower middle class voters is being underestimated.
Some 137 Labour MPs hold seats that backed Brexit, more than half the party’s total.
And at some point if Article 50 ends up getting bogged down in Parliament, somebody — perhaps insurance millionaire Arron Banks — will begin to finance an aggressive, populist campaign group dedicated to ousting any MP who defies the will of the public.
All of this means the Prime Minister will have to act quickly to prevent the situation from spiralling out of control if the Supreme Court rules against her in the Article 50 case, which is being heard next week.
A decision is expected in January.
She will first have to mount a public, vigorous and passionate defence of Brexit as a positive, epoch-defining choice.
She will have to start to throw Britain’s weight around, and slap down internal and external critics.
She needs to explain that while it would be mutually beneficial for the UK and the EU to agree a transitional deal when we leave, an inability to do so wouldn’t be the end of the world.
She will have to make it clear that she sees the possibility of a free-trade deal with the US as a huge opportunity — one that she will start working on immediately — and that she wishes to diversify the UK away from Europe economically and geopolitically.
She will then have to apply maximal pressure on Tory MPs to back her and be prepared to be pitiless with the House of Lords.
But most important of all, she needs to work out how she would engineer a General Election early in the new year, if all else fails.
The Tories are more popular than anybody can remember, with the country in the midst of a historic shift to the right, caused in large part by the fact that the pro-Brexit majority still believes that Theresa May will deliver for them.
She cannot afford to let them down, even if that means taking the greatest gamble of her career.
Allister Heath/Telegraph Media Group