Is Theresa May following Richard Nixon’s ‘madman theory’ over Brexit - or is she actually delusional?

The disgraced US president threatened nuclear war, the prime minister a crash-out Brexit. Rob Merrick compares the two strategies

Nixon’s tactic was to threaten nuclear war to end the Vietnam quagmire (Getty)

As the Brexit crisis deepens, commentators have begun to liken Theresa May to perhaps the most disgraced leader in western history – Richard Nixon.

They don’t mean she lied about a dirty tricks break-in at a hotel called Watergate, but that she’s adopted the former US president’s tactics for defeating an opponent by threatening an action so disastrous it suggests the person making the threat is now irrational. It has come to be known as the “madman theory”.

In Nixon’s case, it was proposing nuclear war to end the Vietnam quagmire – in the prime minister’s world, a crash-out Brexit that would trigger a recession and arguably open the borders to terrorists.

This week, Ms May went back to threatening a no-deal, if the Commons again throws out her deal, despite previously admitting the outcome would cause huge damage.

The motive, of course, is to terrify Labour MPs into voting for her withdrawal agreement when – speaker John Bercow permitting – it returns for a third and final bid next week.

Just as Ho Chi Minh was meant to think, “Jeez, Nixon might really nuke us!”, so potential deal backers among Jeremy Corbyn’s troops are supposed to conclude, “Wow, she might really throw us off the cliff!”.

So far, so scary, but there is a more chilling theory – that the prime minister has now gone over the edge herself and is genuinely willing to carry out a no-deal Brexit if it is the only way left to leave the EU. Add to that the fact that parliament could not legally stop her without difficulty.

Anna Soubry, the ex-Conservative who is now part of the Independent Group, certainly believes she has detected this “big change” after meeting Ms May for talks this week.

“I think she’s delusional, I’m being really serious about this. She is in such a meltdown that she actually would be prepared for us to leave without a deal,” was the former Tory’s astonishing verdict.

Of course, the truth is that no one really knows, given the prime minister’s sheer inscrutability and refusal to set out what she really intends.

Even senior cabinet ministers are in the dark. It’s said that no one really knows her “apart from Philip” – that Philip being her husband not, heaven forbid, the chancellor Philip Hammond.

So, practising the madman theory, or actually no longer rational? We could find out all too soon.

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