Britain’s Theresa May is all-in on Brexit with lousy cards

"As two years of bargaining begins, rivals within herparty will make her pay for every concession"

On Brexit, Prime Minister Theresa may has played a horrible hand as well as anyone could. She has managed to maintain unity within her Conservative Party and worked hard to overcome suspicions that she isn’t committed to leaving the E.U. Setting out her objectives in a Jan. 17 speech, she made clear that Britain will reassert control of its borders and will not accept the E.U.’s judicial author­ity.

From that starting point, her government will then work to get the best deal possible for Britain’s economy. After being criticized for playing her cards too close to her chest, she now has solid backing at least from those on her side of the bargaining table. The Jan. 24 Supreme Court ruling on Parliament’s role in the process is unlikely to delay the for­mal triggering of Brexit in the spring.

In addition, May has won conciliatory signals from Germany, by far the most im­portant player on the other side. In a January speech at Davos, Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble pledged to do all he can to secure a deal that works for both the U.K. and the E.U. This will give May room to build a strategy.May also understands that a U.K. out­ side the E.U. will need as many friends and commercial partners as it can get. 

That’s the subtext behind her visit to see President Trump on Jan. 27. It’s the first step toward a future trade deal that can be finalized quickly after Britain finally leaves the E.U.But it’s still a bad hand she’s playing, and darker days will come. As two years of hard bargaining begins, rivals within her party will make her pay for every concession toward compromise, and her position will become more precarious if, as expected, Britain’s economy weakens.

May won her job without an election,and her mandate re­mains in question. Nor should the goodwill a crossthe table be over­estimated. German flexibility is impor­tant, but Chancellor Angela Merkel is los­ing clout within Europe, and others on the E.U. side will work hard to ensure that Britain doesn’t get a deal that makes exit look ap­ pealing for other member states like France or Italy. 

May can’t cut a deal with Trump, or anyone else, until negotiations with the E.U. end, likely in 2019. It’s reasonable to wonder whether May can survive that long.That said, it’s also an open question whether the E.U. itself will exist in its cur­ rent form in two years’ time. In modern­ day Europe, almost nobody is flush with aces.

Will Turkey vote to give Erdogan even more power?

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan already enjoys almost unchecked power, after surviving an attempted military coup in July 2016 and carrying out a vast clampdown on his opponents. Now the Turkish public is set to vote in a constitutional referendum that would hand Erdogan even more control over the state:

NEW POWERS 

On Jan. 21 a bitterly divided Turkish parliament approved the last of 18 amendments, which would replace Turkey’s parliamentary system of government with a presidential system. That would eliminate the office of the Prime Minister,limit parliament’s powers and hand the executive more control over the judiciary.

FIGHTING WORDS 

Erdogan’s supporters say the changes are needed in order to reinstate stability. The opposi­tion rejects them as a brazen power grab. The par­liamentary debate was so heated that lawmakers came to blows. The vote, likely to be held in March or April, could give rise to even hotter emotions.

VOTER INTENTIONS 

The question now is whether a divided population will vote in favor of the new system; some opinion polls show a narrow majority opposed to it. Much will depend on whether Erdogan can mobilize his conservative and mostly religious base—and whether his opponents are able to freely campaign against the proposal. At least 11 opposition law­makers are in prison, and critical media are being silenced. The new system’s harshest critics say the end of Turkish democracy is at hand. The referendum gives the public a chance to prove them wrong.

Stranded in Serbia

Frozen clothes belonging to migrants and refugees hang on trees behind the main train station in Belgrade on Jan. 15.

After borders tightened along the Balkan route to Western Europe, more than 1,000 men and boys have lived in limbo amid dire conditions in a crumbling warehouse complex.

Relying on supplies from aid groups, they shower out door sand build fires inside to stay warm.

How President Trump is trampling precedent

The old WashingTon adage of “Watch what we do, not what we say” is hard to apply to someone as serially outrageous as Donald Trump. But for all his untethered pronouncements about voter fraud and crowd size and media bias, it was President Trump’s brisk succession of executive actions that probably defined the opening of his presidency.

Small-government conservatives have deplored the use and overuse of Executive Orders since the Clinton era, but Trump has figured out at least this much about the office he now holds: if you want to do anything quickly in Washington, you have to do it yourself.

And so he set about building a wall, restarting pipelines, killing trade deals and targeting so-called sanctuary cities and Obamacare. Overall, the momentum was the message. Trump met with CEOs to talk about jobs and with Detroit automakers to talk about on shoring factories and touted upcoming visits from the leaders of the U.K., Israel and Mexico. And perhaps nothing signaled that Washington had a new boss like his decision on Jan. 23 to remove the U.S. from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a 12-nation free-trade pact that the U.S. had championed through years of negotiation.Here is a more detailed rundown:

Health care

On Jan. 20, Trump signed an Executive Order that takes aim at the Affordable Care Act by directing federal agencies to begin preparing to unwind the law. That move comes as complaints about rising premiums and out-of-pocket deductibles have put the law under more intense scrutiny. But if Republicans on Capitol Hill are keen to repeal the law in its entirety, they aren’t anywhere close to agreement about what, if anything, to replace it with. That may take years.

Immigration

On Jan. 25, Trump signed an Executive Order shifting federal funds to pay for the construction of a border wall, which he predicted would begin within “months.” There’s still no sign that Trump can coax Mexico into footing the bill eventually, though he has scheduled a Jan. 31 meeting with President Enrique Peña Nieto. Trump has also directed the Department of Homeland Security to find ways to cut off federal grants to cities that harbor immigrants in the country illegally, as he promised during the campaign, and to speed up deportations of people in the U.S. without legal status. But his aides have signaled that a plan for dealing with young people who are in the U.S. illegally is low on his agenda. He is also set to sign a temporary ban on most refugee resettlement in the U.S. and a block on any new visas for citizens of some Muslim-majority nations like Syria and Iraq.

Trade, Energy, Economics 

With cameras clicking, Trump signed documents effectively killing a massive Pacific trade deal—a key campaign promise—and rebooted plans for a pair of oil and gas pipelines that his predecessor shelved amid environmentalists’ opposition. He met with the Big Three automakers to press them on domestic manufacturing,as well as union chiefs and workers. Trump again advised companies against moving production overseas, warning that he could institute a border tax.

(Republicans at the Capitol have other ideas.) Trump reiterated his pledge to renegotiate NAFTA after he meets with Peña Nieto and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Abortion

Like previous Republican Presidents, Trump reinstated the so-called Mexico City policy, which prevents foreign-aid groups that receive U.S. assistance from promoting, let alone providing, abortions. He also promised to announce on Feb. 2 his nominee to the Supreme Court, who he has vowed will support overturning Roe v. Wade. And Kellyanne Conway, a key aide, is set to meet with antiabortion demonstrators when they march on Washington on Jan. 27.

Foreign Policy

On some matters, Trump has heeded established diplomatic norms. He invited the Prime Minister of the post-Brexit U.K., Theresa May, to be the first foreign leader to visit the White House. And he appears to be backing off a campaign promise to move the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a gambit that could further upend troubled Middle East peace talks. Yet in other ways he veered sharply off the course set by President Obama. 

The White House declined to condemn new Israeli settlements on the West Bank, a frequent target of his predecessor. A spokesman said the U.S. was now open to teaming up with Russia in the fight against ISIS. The Trump Administration vowed to stop China from accessing islands in the international waters of the South China Sea, a move that inflamed Beijing. And Trump is reportedly considering a directive to reauthorize “black site” prisons overseas where enemy combatants were tortured during the George W. Bush Administration and won’t rule out bringing back such aggressive interrogation tactics as water boarding.