Two games, two bloody difficult women

Ken Clarke did Theresa May a huge favour back in 2016, when he was overheard saying to a colleague, "Theresa is a bloody difficult woman, but you and I worked with Margaret Thatcher." First, he made himself look like a sexist throwback, while giving Mrs May a bit of free feminist credibility to appropriate in the spirit of #nastywoman, or "Nevertheless, she persisted."

Second, in a more specifically Conservative context, namechecking May in the same breath as Margaret Thatcher must, for many Conservatives, have sounded like the ultimate accolade. If they had any doubts before, the children of the Thatcher revolution probably shelved them at the prospect of Maggie 2.0 going forth to slay the Brussels dragon with one swing of her mighty iron handbag.

I'm no Conservative, and certainly no fan of Margaret Thatcher, but even I can see how Clarke's careless comparison must have burnished May's reputation at a critical time. After all, Thatcher fans can point to the negotiating record of Bloody Difficult Woman 1.0 and say "look, she went to Europe and got us our rebate." And they'd be right. That actually happened.

Of course, since the Tories booted up Maggie 2.0, AKA the Maybot, the new model has failed to extract any similar concessions from Europe. Disappointed Thatcher fans will probably put this failure down to her lacking the conviction and resolve of the original Iron Lady, but at this point, I'd start to disagree with them.

Yes, Margaret Thatcher negotiated some meaningful concessions from Europe where May, playing an even higher-stakes game, has so far failed. But I don't put May's failure down to personal deficiencies. Rather, I think that she's playing a different game to the one Thatcher won and, in this new game, the odds are stacked against her and the House almost always wins:

Here’s the idea: two-level game tactics, in which you reduce your win-set with a view to maximising the chances of your preferred option carrying the day, work if everyone prefers staying together over not finding a solution. This is known as a battle of the sexes game: John wants to go to the football game while Mary wants to go to the theatre, but both want to do something together rather than go alone. A battle of the sexes game is about the unequal distribution of outcomes when both want to cooperate. So, as long as the UK is in the EU, being a slightly recalcitrant member works in its favour because the rest of the EU wants a deal more than no deal.

While it works well as long as the UK wants to remain an EU member, the two-level game tactics backfire when you are negotiating leaving the EU. Drawing red lines when you don’t want to cooperate anymore is massively counterproductive, even if you negotiate among equals but certainly if the other party controls the process. Since there is de facto no second level anymore – the UK has had its Brexit vote and, as Theresa May reminds us almost daily, Brexit means Brexit – the UK no longer is able to use that as a way of forcing other EU member states to inch closer to its preferred outcome. It is, indeed, much simpler to negotiate opt-outs during forty years of membership than opt-ins when leaving the EU.

Thatcherites are, I think, wrong to put May's failure down to a lack of bloody mindedness. As far as I can see, she's got enough of that to be either praised for her resolve, or damned for her stubbornness, depending on your point of view. What she doesn't bring to the table is a deterrent. When Thatcher negotiated her rebate, her negotiating partners gave ground because they had a relationship to save. Mrs May has not only filed for divorce, but has said, repeatedly, "Divorce means divorce."

It reminds me of that bit in The Life of Brian, where a high priest, or some such cleric, is sentencing an old man to be stoned to death for blasphemously uttering the name of Jehovah. When the old man accidentally blasphemes some more, the cleric says "You're only making it worse for yourself!" No longer having anything to lose, the old man replies "Making it worse?! How could it be worse?! Jehovah! Jehovah! Jehovah!" In the end, the cleric himself ends up being stoned, but I guess it's a bit late to remind the vicar's daughter that some serious self-examination is generally recommended before casting the first stone: