Britain after Theresa May

I eventually decided to vote in the EU elections yesterday, and I actually surprised myself by voting Tory. Don't get be wrong, I do not support the Tories. In fact, I rather loathe them. They were certainly among my least favourite parties on the ballot paper. My vote was really for Theresa May and her Brexit deal -- or rather, it was a vote against all other options. I fear a second referendum, and I do not know how anyone could be persuaded the liberal economic utopia presented by the vast majority of Brexiteer politicians. Corbyn seems to want to offer an alternative, but his party won't let him.

I would have favoured a different compromise to that which May achieved. Mine would have had even greater long-term economic ties with the EU (begins with 'N', ends with 'way'), alongside a separate pursuit of domestic policies (anti-mass immigration, degree of protectionism, localism) that were implicit in the EU vote. For the vote was about culture and law, not dry economics. (As a matter of fact, I think Theresa May instictively understood some of this, unlike most of the Brexiteers in her party.)

As May has pointed out, her deal would get us out of the EU parliament the ECJ. We would be tied to some of the EU's trade rules, but not under its jurisdiction, and we would get a lot of money back. It's not a good deal, granted, but it's better than any of the current alternatives. 

Well, at least it was. I am sad to see Theresa May go. She was not a good prime minister. Her beliefs are mostly contrary to mine, at least so far as I can tell. But I do not doubt she acted in the national interest; her resignation speech showed an obvious, emotional patriotism. This will become rarer and rarer in the years to come and so I cherish it while I can. Our future options seems to be the 'free trade' utopians who want a 'global Britain', the international socialists in the Labour Party and the Greens, the EU-philes who would happily see Britain subsumed into a federal European state, and the bland managerial class in all the main parties, but especially the Tories. And right-wing parties like UKIP are so laughably useless and so politically, culturally and morally misguided. They come across as a sort of parody of the right.

For conservatives, natural pessimists, this is an especially hopeless time.