May calls on MPs to get on with Brexit and move on - but it's her government's own doing that it's consumed all political space

This afternoon, Theresa May addressed the Commons to present the terms she has negotiated for Britain's exit from the European Union. As may well have been expected at this point, it did not get a warm reception. All the big hitters were queued up to get in their licks.

After yet another hostile session, the Prime Minister may very well have been feeling like the constituents she has now taken to quoting: ready to just get on with Brexit and move on. But it's the PM's own approach that has brought us to this Parliamentary impasse.

A referendum, a snap election and two years of legislative time have been poured into Brexit - along with billions from the treasury and repeated knocks taken by the economy with the instability caused by each new jarring announcement.

In that time, domestic policy has taken the backseat. That has been a disaster both in terms of scrutiny and delivery.

The government's flagship welfare 'reform' the Universal Credit has rolled from one crisis to another. Supposed to be the consolidation of a number of different welfare programmes into a more efficient and affordable system, it has faced ever mounting problems.

The minister who had been the driving force behind it quit when he was severely undercut on funding. The attached fitness assessments have been derided as cruel. Even a rapporteur for the United Nations has deeply criticised the misery inflicted upon the most vulnerable by a government pursuing ideological ends.

The government has claimed that Universal Credit has driven people into work, but this welfare system - underfunded, misadministered, and leaving vulnerable people at the mercy of growing debts - can only have motivated people in the worst way, with employment statistics covering an explosion in working poverty.

And those are just the headlines. The government has not done enough on housing. It has not done enough to meet environmental and energy targets. It has not done enough to encourage an economic system that can lift ordinary people out of poverty - on welfare or in work.

When Theresa May talks of constituents telling her to get on with Brexit, she may be reframing disgruntlement. It's May's government that has turned politics in Britain into nothing but Brexit - and in the process has managed to deeply divide the country.

With so many domestic issues in need of attention, Brexit needs to be settled. But what Parliamentarians can't do is make a hasty decision under pressure - for which the Prime Minister is pushing.

May's government has put us here and shouldn't be allowed to use it to sneak out from under their own mess.moving towards resolving the deeply important and long term domestic issues that have gone unattended under May's watch.

References

'Brexit: Theresa May defends deal amid criticism from MPs'; on the BBC; 26 November 2018.

Patrick Butler and Robert Booth's 'Key points from UN envoy's report on poverty in Britain: Summary of Philip Alston’s report which says austerity has inflicted misery on UK citizens'; in The Guardian; 16 November 2018.

Daniel Wright's 'Working families still locked in poverty – time to right the wrong of in-work poverty'; from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation; 22 March 2018.

Patrick Butler's 'Record 60% of Britons in poverty are in working families – study: In-work poverty disproportionately concentrated in households in private rented housing as rising living costs bite'; in The Guardian; 22 May 2017.