Theresa May ‘will be out by January’ as flaxen-haired vote winner Boris Johnson looms into view for Conservatives, predicts Trevor Kavanagh
HERE’S an early New Year prediction from Mystic Trev. Theresa May will be out as Prime Minister by January and Britain will quit the EU on March 29, deal or no deal.
Forecasting is a risky trade and my score sheet is stained by last year’s election fiasco. But this is the festive season and I am looking on the bright side.
My crystal ball clouds over when it comes to Mrs May’s successor, but a chap with flaxen hair is looming into focus.
On one key issue at least, Boris Johnson speaks for almost everybody in Parliament, both Leavers and Remainers . . . Mrs May’s Brexit deal stinks. It allows Brussels to take Northern Ireland hostage and “blackmail” Britain into abject surrender.
Provoked by the BBC’s Andrew Marr, Mr Johnson yesterday shouldered responsibility for the momentous 2016 vote for Brexit — and its consequences.
“Do not underestimate the deep sense of personal responsibility I feel for Brexit,” he said. It absolutely breaks my heart, after everything we campaigned for, that we are consigning ourselves to a future in which the EU effectively rules us and we have no say around the table in Brussels.”
Not for the first time, the former Foreign Secretary sums up the sense of betrayal over Theresa May’s botched and deceitful Withdrawal deal.
A huge new poll shows a majority in every constituency is against her scheme and the £39billion ransom she has promised Brussels.
There is scant support for the complex and fraught Norway Option — otherwise known as the Remainer’s Brexit — and a loud raspberry for a second referendum. Most voters want a Canada-plus trade deal, with no borders down the Irish Sea.
If that’s not on offer, the most popular choice across all parties is a clean, real, no-deal Brexit on March 29.
Theresa May has done sweet Fanny Adams on No Deal planning. But for all the hysteria about transport chaos and empty food and medicine shelves, docks and airport authorities insist they can cope, with no real supply problems.
Indeed, the EU’s greatest fear is that we will cope rather too well, flourishing outside as a free trader and tempting other EU states to follow suit. All this leaves the PM’s Withdrawal plan with few friends.
We will see tomorrow if she steps on to the Commons scaffold or begs Brussels for a stay of execution. Since the EU is unlikely to surrender its wretched Northern Ireland “backstop”, she looks doomed either way.
A leadership contest is already up and running. With Nigel Farage threatening to set up a NewKIP pro-Brexit party, the Tories cannot risk another Remainer as leader. That rules out Home Secretary Sajid Javid and Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, able though they are, and leaves two serious candidates, Boris and Dominic Raab.
Raab raised his chances by resigning as Brexit Secretary but he lacks Bo-Jo’s vote-winning charisma.
Meanwhile, Momentum Labour is jostling for another election. Jeremy Corbyn, a Bennite Leaver, opposes a second referendum. Devious John McDonnell is “greasing the steps” under his leadership.
Stirring the pot is ambitious schemer Keir Starmer — an opportunist who, as public prosecutor, was accused of putting political ambition ahead of the public interest and even the pursuit of justice.
Along with Tory plotters such as Dominic Grieve, Starmer is pushing for a second referendum with a dodgy set of questions that blur the in/out option. Whatever tricks they play, Remainers cannot change the result of the 2016 vote. The people have spoken. Brexit is set in concrete.
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Europe’s Grand Projet — corrupt, undemocratic and unaccountable — has failed. It cannot guard its own borders. It has destroyed Greece, abandoned Italy and thrown millions of young workers on the scrapheap.
France’s “yellow jacket” riots are just the latest backlash against Europe’s bureaucratic contempt for ordinary voters. This is a working-class revolution and there is real fear it will spread to Britain.
If we allow Theresa May or any other weak-minded Remainer to lock us back into Europe’s fatal embrace, we will reap that whirlwind.