May was always a remainer.

Does a country get the leaders that it deserves? If so, what does the present political disarray say about Britain? Or is it that the conditions of modern democracy guarantee the ascension of ambitious mediocrities, leaders without powers of leadership?

From the first in the Brexit negotiations, Prime Minister Theresa May—who had already proved her weakness and incompetence at the Home Office, Britain’s interior ministry—showed the vision of a Chamberlain, rather than a Churchill. It should have been obvious to her—as it should have been obvious to Neville Chamberlain that Hitler was no ordinary politician—that it was essential, in fact a matter of life and death, for the European Union to make Brexit a disaster for Britain because, were it not, then that would be a disaster for the European Union.

A prosperous Britain outside the Union would have destroyed the EU’s raison d’être, which was already strongly under attack. Emmanuel Macron, president of France, even said that if France had held a referendum at the same time that Britain did, the result would have been a bigger majority for leaving than in Britain. Brexit was thus an opportunity for European politicians to demonstrate that, however unsatisfactory the Union might be, life would be worse without it.