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| Early morning Abu Dhabi. |
I've been out of the country this week, not in Europe for a change but in Abu Dhabi for a global space conference. There are plenty of Brits around and, let me assure you, the view from here of our country in crisis due to a demented prime minister is no better.
I watched her rant yesterday, dressed up as a speech, courtesy of a Sky News feed in my hotel room TV. Has anyone ever learned anything from a speech by Theresa May? I think not. Sinister, dangerous and almost entirely counterproductive is how I would describe her latest effort.
MPs - whose votes she still needs - woke up today angrier than ever at being blamed for the failings of this reckless, deluded PM who, unforgivably, has whipped up fury against parliament and is putting party before country yet again.
The core politics of May's public statement, ‘I, the Leader, defend my people against a rotten parliament' are divisive and sinister.
Despite her protestations to the contrary, the impasse in parliament is actually all of the prime minister’s own making. She never reached out to the 48 percent, or to other parties to create a Brexit compromise. And she set down red lines from the outset on which she has proved stubbornly intransigent.
During last night’s brief appearance couched as a ‘statement to the people’ we probably saw Theresa May at her worst. An authoritarian with no authority, trying to stir up the malcontents in the country - and to what end?
She is rightly being called a genuinely ‘bad person’ (in Trumpesque-speak) for that performance, and the most divisive leader imaginable in terrible circumstances. Her contempt for parliamentary democracy and crass populism apparently knows no bounds. It is profoundly anti-democratic to blame parliament for her mistakes and incompetence.
No surprise, therefore, that people across the rest of Europe, and in the wider world from where I view this sorry state of affairs, are beginning to look at the UK as a failed state.
To avoid catastrophic implosion as a nation we are sadly now left with few realistic possibilities or options. The most pragmatic being to revoke Article 50, grow up and put this whole sorry episode behind us.
Sign petition: Revoke Article 50
