The Defeat of Obsessive Ambition
She sought to expand her party’s majority in Parliament to enter the Brexit negotiations from a position of strength. And she wanted to purge her internal party critics. Now, the British Prime Minister Theresa May stands before the ruins of her power tactics. The Tories failed to increase their absolute majority; instead, they squandered it. Not a single party managed to secure an absolute majority in the British House of Commons. Incidentally, the Scottish National Party also lost ground. Analysts suggest this was driven by a fear of an uncertain future, had the SNP pursued another referendum on withdrawing from the United Kingdom.
A commentary by Rainhard Kloucek
Theresa May is thus following in the footsteps of her predecessor as Prime Minister, David Cameron. He also held a majority in Parliament and wanted to silence his internal critics; he therefore called the Brexit referendum, believing all the polls which suggested his compatriots would vote to remain in the EU. It turned out differently than expected.
Power is arguably the most significant category in party politics. The addiction to expanding it has now proved the undoing of two British Prime Ministers within a very short space of time. Yet they are no isolated case. One need only think of the then French President Jacques Chirac and his referendum on the EU Constitution. He called it because every poll indicated that a substantial majority of the French would vote in favour of the constitutional treaty. The power-conscious Chirac wanted to make his halo shine even brighter. The result is well known: the French rejected the constitution—not necessarily because they were against the document itself, but because they wanted to deal their President a blow. Sometimes voters allow themselves to be manipulated and used for a politician’s claim to power. But not always.
Whoever ends up forming a government in Great Britain with whomsoever else: rumours suggest May intends to form a minority government with the support of the Northern Irish Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), thus without a formal coalition. The most notorious DUP politician was Ian Paisley, a horrific agitator who also sat in the European Parliament. Otto von Habsburg once helped to have him ejected from the plenary chamber.
Such a government will not hold a truly strong position for the withdrawal negotiations. This might tempt certain power-politicians within the EU to conduct these negotiations with an excess of self-importance. In any event, Europe can have no interest in a weak Great Britain. The founder of the Paneuropean Union, Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, knew this. A united Europe must never set itself against the United Kingdom, he maintained. Even if he originally did not see Great Britain as a member of a united Europe due to the Empire, he was nonetheless in favour of a strong partnership with the island nation.
