By the time that I write my next column we shall have a new Prime Minister.

 

For the moment, though, there is the opportunity to look back on the three years of Theresa May`s Premiership and to reflect both upon what she has achieved and the business that she has had to leave unfinished.  Her aspirations, when she spoke on the doorstep of Number 10 in 2016, were considerable. She genuinely wanted to leave behind her a united and more socially cohesive society than the one that she inherited and I know that it is a source of disappointment and concern to her that so much of the work that she has set in hand remains incomplete.

 

The sad fact is that the decision to leave the European Union and all that flows from it has overshadowed every corner of national political life to the exclusion of almost all else. I recall, for example, chairing an Agriculture Bill months ago. That important piece of legislation has yet to receive its report stage and third reading in the Commons never mind its passage through the House of Lords and onto the statute books and there are many other Bills  that, through lack of a government majority or the need to get paving regulations through committees, have stalled or even  failed to see the light of parliamentary day. You can , of course, make the case that “if only Theresa May hasc not called an election in 2017…………” but it is easy to be wise after the event and there were few on the Government benches , whatever they may claim as they re-write history, who at the time did not believe that it was wise to seek a better majority and mandate to deliver the Brexit decision for which the British people had voted.

 

It might all have been very different. With a decent majority my guess is that two years ago, had it been available then, MP`s would have fought to snatch the Withdrawal Agreement out of your hand, we would have been out of the EU well before Christmas of last year and well on the way to negotiating our future trading relationships with the EU and the rest of the world and our ongoing diplomatic and security arrangements with Europe by now. The failure of the Government to secure an overall majority, the need to form and depend upon a “supply and confidence” agreement with the DUP  and the opportunity for minorities within the Government Party to hold the Prime Minister not only  to account but also to ransom has led us through three defeats of the Withdrawal Agreement and consequent missed opportunities to extricate ourselves from the EU to where we are today.

 

The incoming Prime Minister, whose name will be known to us next week, will face the same problems that Mrs. May has left behind her: the parliamentary arithmetic remains the same, there is no majority in the House for any one solution, it is just possible that the EU might re-open limited re-negotiations with Jeremy Hunt but much less likely that they will do so for Mr. Johnson and pledges to `leave without a deal on October 31st` such as the one that  the latter signed are scarcely  worth the cardboard that they have been scrawled upon.

 

Whether or not Theresa May will again fight her parliamentary seat in the snap General Election that now seems increasingly inevitable or whether she will take a well-earned and justified seat in the Upper House is for her to decide.  As I have said publicly, however, I believe that history will regard her tenure of office as Prime Minister rather more kindly than it will judge those who, in squalid self-interest, have sought to prevent her from finishing the job that she had started.

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