Once you have seen Theresa May tell a hall full of Conservative conference delegates that she will lead them out of the European Union, it is very hard to imagine how David Cameron could ever have stood before the same people to say the opposite.
Ripples of ecstasy washed across the Birmingham Symphony Hall as the prime minister affirmed her commitment to Brexit. It doesn’t matter that May backed the losing side in the referendum. It might even have helped, because she now compensates with born-again zeal. There is more rejoicing in the kingdom of Euroscepticism at one remainer who repenteth than over 99 righteous leavers who have no need of repentance. [...]
All that May has to offer is symbols, but symbols are a more powerful currency with true believers than is ever understood by agnostics. Likewise, the prime minister’s repeated assertion that “Brexit means Brexit” has attracted more ridicule than it deserves. (May has now added a second line to the mantra: “It means we are going to leave the European Union.”) To the cynical ear this is vacuity dressed in tautology. But that objection presumes that slogans are meant to transmit information. Often their function is performative – a signal of belonging to the tribe. There is a liturgical quality to May’s Brexit creed. You can imagine it as a call-and-response prayer, with the congregation supplying the new follow-up verse. [...]
This is nothing less than a reformation in the Church of Conservatism, with the authority of Brussels cast as a modern-day Rome. Cameron tried to manage the old schism but the suspicion lingered that his loyalties were divided; that he read from a vernacular Tory bible at home and then jumped on the Eurostar to kiss the papal commission’s ring. Now Theresa May stands before her party like Elizabeth I: a true, Protestant queen, their own Gloriana.
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