Theresa May’s resignation has lots talking about the “impossible situation” that she inherited from David Cameron.
No one can seriously argue that Brexit, and unpicking four decades of close economic and political integration, wasn’t going to be a significant public policy challenge that would take up a good chunk of the government’s energy and focus. One of the sources of May’s difficulties has been the gradual unravelling of the referendum campaign’s big lie: that the United Kingdom’s membership of the European Union was a small thing that could be unpicked swiftly and cleanly. This was a lie perpetuated by both sides of the debate: on the Leave side it was necessary to get people to back an Out vote, while the Remain campaign judged that its best hope of victory lay in minimising the scale of shared sovereignty involved in our membership of the bloc.
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