Theresa May: talking loudly but carrying a small stick | Martin Kettle

Her statement decrying EU meddling in the election was right out of the Donald Trump playbook. It’s consensus, not conflict, that will get Britain the deal it needs

The opinion polls may show the Conservatives nearly 20 points ahead of Labour, but the signs from Theresa May’s camp this week are that they are getting surprisingly twitchy. Improbable though this may seem – and it almost certainly is a bluff – it is a reminder that May has put her own job on the line for the next five weeks, and that she will be destroyed politically if her snap poll does not work.

All the signs are that May was caught on the hop by the counter-attack from Europe against her vision of Brexit, which she denounced in Downing Street this afternoon. The fractious dinner with the commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, was followed by a rare public reprimand from Angela Merkel and now the uncompromising speech by the EU’s chief negotiator Michel Barnier, who warned this morning that the process will neither be quick nor painless – even though May tries to claim it will be both.

In one sense the EU attacks are just what May might have wanted … they allow her to pose as Britannia

Continue reading...