Sleeping on it

Last week Theresa May set out her strategy. Not in Parliament but to an audience of front row seats for Johnson, Fox and such like.

Across the Atlantic Ocean he of Trump Towers has sworn that black is white in terms of crowd sizes. Women are on the march.

Northern Ireland teeters on the edge. So many less than impressed with the prospect of a “red, white and blue Brexit”. Not the best choice of words really.

Nicola Sturgeon pushes. Not too much. But enough.

The Supreme Court verdict is now given reasserting supremacy of Parliament and denying the right to use prerogative powers.

I felt unable to put finger to key after the May speech. What was it all about? The threat of a tax haven, the race to the bottom in terms of Corporation Tax cuts to promote investment.

Confused, I took the view that the dust needed to clear. I had to sleep on it.

I have always said that there would be twists and turns; events that nobody could have predicted.

I never foresaw Trident. I believe in the maintenance of our nuclear deterrent. However, when Andrew Marr asked the Prime Minister on a number of occasions whether she had known about the missile test failure the box was opened up. The question revealed more than it should have done. The answer to the question was insignificant, if responded to openly. The repeated failure to provide an answer was a revelation. It was like a midfielder taking out a striker heading for the dugout in the centre circle.

In Trident there emerged the true mindset of the leader hoping to deliver that banal B-word. Mind all-a-muddle. Unable to ward off the consequences of Andrew Marr’s benign but ultimately potentially malignant line of questioning. The auto pilot was still switched on but with the fog having descended the pilot was evidently struggling to take over the manual controls.

Last week the Prime Minister suggested that each side in the referendum had understood that a leave vote would be a vote to leave the single market. No, this is patently not the case and precisely why the leavers sought to reassure that in voting to leave there could be a Norway, or a Switzerland scenario. Either the Prime Minister has a short memory or her mind is clouded by the fog.

To her credit on television she would not make a good liar. Whilst staying on the right side, just, between evasion, or prevarication versus an outright breach of one of the ten commandments, the discomfort of finding herself so close to the line with Marr was obvious to all.

Her pioneering meeting with the new champion of the free world may be as ill-advised as her tartan outfit, her £900 leather trousers, or her decision not to answer Andrew Marr’s Trident question until more than 24 hours after he asked it; again, and again. As evidently uncomfortable as she was, so equally comfortable was the presidential team across the pond boasting an “alternative fact” so evidently not a fact at all. A strange meeting it will be.

I am concerned. Beneath the bravado of the red, white and blue Brexit, the leather trousers, and the “a citizen of the world is a citizen of nowhere” battle cry it appears to me that there is somebody far more fragile, tired and confused. Who wouldn’t be?

If I can see it, you can bet your bottom billion dollars that more experienced moguls of business will have seen the chink in the armour a long time ago. They might even be inclined to buy the country as the price is down 20%.

A fire sale purchase of a 51st State in all but name which could serve as an offshore utility room. Dirty laundry nicely tucked away from view.

As I never foresaw Trident so there will be other images to emerge from the fog that’s for sure. The Prime Minister’s handling of a meeting with a man who appears to be alienating women globally may cast some further clues for those who are looking for the landing lights.

British Prime Ministers do not always fare well in relations with their more powerful US counterparts. Neither have they always been successful in flying abroad to seek reassurances in troubled times.

The Prime Minister has to be very careful indeed and to keep a cool head. The inevitable slight of being snubbed by the 27 other club members probably still smarts a bit. So may the Supreme Court’s decision.

Her job will also have been made more challenging by the visits of Messrs. Farage and Gove to Trump Towers, so transparently desperate to ingratiate themselves.

Dr Fox who has not paid a visit as either politician or journalist (or a combination of both) to the best of my knowledge was a director and founding member of an organisation called The Atlantic Bridge, whose aims were effectively to promote the transatlantic over the cross-channel.

These players, and a couple of others, it seems to me, are feverish in their desire to wrench the country away from the continent.

Farage can display a looseness of the tongue. Like he did on GMTV on 24th June 2016. More recently he remarked that those who didn’t like 2016 were going to hate 2017.

I worry. Why did he say that?

Considering afresh the constitution of the referendum and its eligibility criteria does not help clear the fog.

The meeting with the 45th President will be a big, big moment for Theresa May and might define her premiership.

Does she look like the confident penalty taker? You know, the one who can look the goalkeeper straight in the eye.