Fall Out: A Year of Political Mayhem

by Tim Shipman

The question for Labour was whether the fourth worst defeat in their modern history could be considered a victory. It certainly felt like one.

May and Fiona Hill saw the negotiation as a mirror of the talks they had engaged in with Brussels on justice and home affairs, when May opted out of more than one hundred directives then back into her chosen thirty-five. An official who saw her then said May was ‘the most reliable’ cabinet minister on difficult issues. ‘Once she decided what she was going to do it she stuck there. She had a terrible time over the European Arrest Warrant. I always found her completely steadfast.’

Whatever else Theresa May did wrong, the prime minister along with Nick Timothy, Fiona Hill, David Davis, Oliver Robbins, Philip Hammond and Boris Johnson were prepared to put themselves in the arena.