This was Prime Minister Theresa May’s To-do list today: Dissolve Parliament; Notify Her Majesty; and Throw the Gauntlet on the European Union (BBC, emphasis added).
The PM launched a stinging attack on the “bureaucrats of Brussels” in a speech outside 10 Downing Street after meeting the Queen.
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“Britain’s negotiating position in Europe has been misrepresented in the continental press,” she said, in a reference to a German newspaper’s account of her dinner with the EU Commission chief.
“The European Commission’s negotiating stance has hardened. Threats against Britain have been issued by European politicians and officials.
“All of these acts have been deliberately timed to affect the result of the general election that will take place on 8 June.”
In other words, Theresa May accused the European Union of trying to getting rid of her as Prime Minister. Tories will now feel free to add Jean-Claude Juncker to Jeremy Corbyn’s “coalition of chaos.”
The “misrepresented” accusation is almost certain to guarantee Hurricane Katrina levee-busting level leaks from all sides about just what the UK negotiating position is or was. Conservatives better hope their campaign team is prepared for that.
Meanwhile, Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron got into an argument with a Leave voter. It should come as no surprise that the Telegraph played it up for all it’s worth. I’m not sure it will have much impact though – and I would have said that even before May cleared the news deck with her statement. To this day the most well-known voter to interact with Barack Obama directly is Joe “the Plumber” Wurzelbacher – and Obama is still the only American in thirty years to win a popular and and electoral majority twice.
Indeed, the former president himself can also provide some guidance for the reaction to May’s broadside: his infamous “back of the queue” line about the United Kingdom’s fate in trade deals if it left the EU is now believed to have helped the Leave campaign by allowing it to complain about Washington’s interference in the vote…
…and Barack Obama was and is far more popular than anyone from Brussels.