The 7% Solution

The last time any of us heard about the 7% solution, it was the premise of a rather lame movie involving Sherlock Holmes and Sigmund Freud.

Now, we have a new 7% solution. The number refers to the percentage of British citizens who approve of Prime Minister Theresa May’s handling of the Brexit negotiations. We have been following the rising chorus of commentators who have declared May to be a monument to human ineptitude, so we add this story, from Zero Hedge:

Now that Parliament has (at least temporarily) seized control of the Brexit process from Prime Minister Theresa May's government (prompting the PM to offer Brexiteers her head on a silver platter in exchange for their support for the withdrawal agreement she negotiated with the EU), MPs, including 30 rebel tories and three junior ministers in May's own cabinet, have finally signaled that they have had enough with the government's dysfunctional management of the Brexit process.

And as it turns out, public opinion is overwhelmingly on their side.According to a poll of more than 2,600 British adults conducted by the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen), the only issue that remainers and leavers can agree on regarding the whole Brexit process is that May's government has seriously botched the whole affair. Only 7% of responders said they believed the UK government had handled Brexit well, according to the Guardian.

So now, in her last gambit, May has stated that if Parliament approves her plan or something like it, she will resign the prime ministership.

It doesn’t look like it is going to work out, but it’s the first time May has raised the issue of resigning… a good step toward accepting responsibility for having botched the Brexit negotiations. Now if she only recognized that resigning should precede the Brexit solution, not follow it. She should resign in shame for failing. If she doesn't understand that resigning after victory avoids shame by creating a false persona, she will never be a competent leader.

Oh, well. You can't have it all.