Theresa may

Theresa May’s industrial strategy, launched today at a special Cabinet meeting just outside Warrington, is part of the Prime Minister’s efforts to show that she is doing interesting and original things on the domestic front while also working on the Brexit negotiations. It is also part of her attempt to show that she is different from her predecessors in government. But how different? The 132-page consultation document, Building Our Industrial Strategy, focuses on ‘creating the right conditions for new and growing enterprises to thrive, not protecting the position of incumbents,’ according to Business Secretary Greg Clark. But this is a contrast with the ‘fatally flawed’ plans of the 1970s, rather than the approach of the previous government.

This morning Theresa May appeared on the Andrew Marr show to talk Trump and Trident. While the Prime Minister successfully batted away suggestions that she wasn't doing enough to challenge the US President on feminism -- stating that the fact she will be there 'as a female prime minister' when the two meet is the biggest statement to be made about the role of women -- she struggled on the latter topic. Following a report by the Sunday Times that a serious malfunction in June of Britain's Trident nuclear weapons deterrent was covered up by Downing Street, Marr asked May if she had known about the Trident misfire when she told MPs it should be renewed.

It is hard to be shocked by anything in these tumultuous times, but I was brought up short by the ‘attic’ headline of Tuesday’s Times, advertising the paper’s T2 section: ‘Up close and personal with Donald Trump — Michael Gove’ , it said, and continued, ‘Sex after 50: it’s fabulous’.. The earliest members of Alcoholics Anonymous offered their famous Twelve Steps, which the drunkard must take in order to recover, born of their own experience. The Twelve Steps are still the foundation of AA. They work because they are taken by people who have hit rock bottom and realise it. The first step says, ‘We admitted we were powerless over alcohol — that our lives had become unmanageable.

Jeremy Corbyn’s attack line on Theresa May at Prime Minister’s Questions today might have been more effective had the Labour leader not appeared confused about what he was asking. He had no option but to talk about Brexit, something he has tried to avoid in his year and a half in the job because of his own ambivalence over Europe and his disagreements with his party about what is particularly bad about the European Union. May teased the Labour leader about his apparent confusion yesterday over whether membership of the single market was the same as access to the single market, telling him that ‘I’ve got a plan, he doesn’t have a clue’.

Theresa May’s Lancaster House speech sought to answer the question: does the Government have a plan for Brexit? Open Europe’s judgement is that she succeeded. And she also started to set out a wider vision for the UK’s relationship with the EU, linking it both to Britain’s place in the world, and to her own domestic vision – for the sort of country 'we want to be'. At first sight the Prime Minister’s 12-point plan for a global Britain seems to be a masterclass in common sense. We welcome her clarity on various points, including that – inevitably – both Houses of Parliament will vote on the UK’s final deal with the EU.  Open Europe was pleased by her position on free trade and immigration which appeared sensible and constructive.