UK voters were never very bothered about membership of the European Union (EU) before the Brexit vote last year. Opinion polls instead showed they shared the general feeling of voters everywhere – that their country was heading in the wrong direction, and it was time for a change. Now, last week’s Conservative Party conference showed that the government itself, and the prime minister, have also lost all sense of direction.
The problem is that nobody has any idea of a what a post-Brexit world would look like for the UK. The Leave campaigners famously told the voters it would be a land where the UK would no longer “give” £350m/week ($455m) to Brussels, and could instead spend this money on improving health care and other worthy objectives. This, of course, was a lie, as the head of the National Statistics Agency has since confirmed. But then-premier Cameron failed to call out the lie at the time – fearing it would split his Conservative Party if he did.
15 months later, this lie has again come centre stage as the Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson, revived it before the Conference as part of his bid to replace premier May:
“Once we have settled our accounts, we will take back control of roughly £350 million per week. It would be a fine thing, as many of us have pointed out, if a lot of that money went on the NHS.”
As a result, the splits in the Conservative Party are out in the open, with its former chairman now calling for a leadership election and claiming at least 30 law-makers already support the move. Bookmakers now expect May to leave office this year (offering odds of just evens), and suggest the UK will have a new election next year (odds of 2/1), despite the fact that Parliament has nearly 5 years to run.
May’s problem is two-fold:
