History will not judge the last three months kindly. An election that was supposed to give us more leverage on Brexit has probably given us less. A vote from which the will of the UK public was supposed to be made resoundingly clear has led to more doubt and confusion. And a result that was supposed to give Theresa May a mandate of her own has instead spawned a cabinet within which some ministers seem intent on briefing against each other to the point of mutual destruction. The Opposition meanwhile are busily downgrading vote winning promises to mere ‘ambitions,’ their position on Brexit is inconsistent to say the least and there are still plenty of simmering leadership concerns in the Labour Party too.
The obvious conclusion is that it will all fall down like a house of cards and we’ll be asking you to vote again before the end of the year. That won’t happen. Yet with everything on a political knife-edge in Westminster, politics will, I’m afraid, continue to be both puzzling and petty.
No matter how much the Government might seek to avoid difficult issues, Brexit is the mountain that we can’t go around. When we return to Westminster in September we must start to climb it and we must do so knowing that the British public are absolutely sick of elections, referenda and leadership battles.
My hope is that when we return we’ll have got the leadership manoeuvres out of our system and people will be ready to knuckle down and focus on the monumental task that stands in front of us. A leadership election would be self-indulgent and spectacularly unhelpful when the Brexit clock is ticking so loudly. Hubris has cost us dear over the last three months; a little less of that and a lot more application to the task the lies ahead is what the country desperately needs when things get going again in the Autumn.