An Open Letter to the Prime Minister

The Right Honourable Theresa May, MP
10 Downing Street
London, SW1A 2AA

2nd October 2016

Dear Prime Minister

Article 50 and the Damage Done

Today you announced that Article 50 notification will be given before the end of March 2017.

Thank you for proving me right.

You see, for some months now friends and strangers have tried to convince me that you are a Machiavellian genius, secretly scheming to save our country by plotting an escape route.

Normally this fantasy involved setting up Secretaries Fox, Davies and Johnson for some kind of fall, leaving it to them to prove like Tommies sent over the top that machine gun bullets against naked torsos tend to win.

Having observed you, especially during your six years as Home Secretary, I had reached a very different conclusion. My own judgement is that you are a poor designer of major programmes, a worse judge of character, and, at the least, willing to pander to bigotry to further your own career.

Your design (indeed your very creation) of The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, your appointment of Dame Lowell Goddard as its third head when she was, frankly, a joke in her native New Zealand, and your doctoring of reports on the impact of migration are all the evidence I need.

If you want more I will happily provide it.

Since becoming Prime Minister you have provided yet more evidence of both careerism and incompetence.

Let us start with the latter.

Ever since the day France surrendered in June 1940 it has been a cardinal rule of UK foreign policy that London’s most important relationship is the one with Washington.

And so, as Foreign Secretary you appointed a man who had recently racially abused the President of the United States.

You established the Department for International Trade when it has next to nothing to do, no coherent mission, not even a legal purpose, and brought to lead it a man who had resigned from the Cabinet previously in disgrace.

To lead the Department for Exiting the European Union you chose a man so adept in international affairs that he routinely refers to our nearest and most sensitive of neighbours as “Southern Ireland”.

Not being privy, yet, (history will tell) in detail I can only divine through leaks what your professional advisers from the Governor of the Bank of England to the Treasury to our many diplomatic missions are telling you about our economic and negotiating environment if we do indeed leave the EU. What we do know is they think it’s a disaster.

And yet, you ignore them and proceed with Article 50.

You are, quite literally, willing to destroy your country for the thrill of a few years in Number Ten. Not only do you lack the basic skills for that office, but you are willing to inflict untold misery on generations just for your own ambition.

You represent a party which in its day has done much for the UK.

You are now leading our country in a direction that will leave it smaller, poorer, weaker and, probably most importantly, ridiculed, for many, many generations to come.

Churchill accused Baldwin of putting his party before his country.

You are putting yourself before your country.

I hope it is worth it.

You have earned my contempt.

I expect from future generations you will earn their revenge.

Yours sincerely

David Welsh, BSc. (Econ), MA