Theresa May had planned to move the political focus this autumn from Brexit to domestic priorities. That was always a tall order when the next round of negotiations and this month’s EU council are looming, but it’s particularly difficult given the Prime Minister managed to lose, not gain, authority with her conference speech. It’s also made harder given that her statement in the Commons yesterday seems to have enraged Brexiteer MPs, who were willing her on before the conference speech fiasco. One senior eurosceptic MP told Coffee House after the admission that the European Court of Justice would still have a role during the Brexit transition that he and colleagues were ‘extremely surprised as this was quite the opposite of what we had been led to believe’.
While those colleagues are trying to get their head around what May is actually aiming for with Brexit, others are trying to work out whether the government is going to do anything at all on the domestic agenda it was apparently so interested in for this autumn.
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