'Chaos is complete': what the European papers say about Brexit

Europe’s commentators have not been kind to Theresa May after she delayed the meaningful vote on her Brexit deal and dashed to the continent in search of further concessions.

“It’s like a long, slow agony,” wrote Sonia Delesalle-Stolper, the London correspondent for the French daily Libération. “You know the end is near, you expect the worst, then there’s a small flicker of light – before another collapse. And it always ends badly.”

May “blew her last bet”, failing miserably to convince parliament to vote for the withdrawal agreement sealed barely two weeks ago. “Rather than suffer the humiliation, she suspended the vote,” the paper said: “The latest plot twist in the infernal Brexit saga. Chaos is complete.”

In the Netherlands, the Volkskrant wondered whether May would still be prime minister by the time the House of Commons got to vote on the deal: “Laughed out by MPs, called out by the Speaker, and on the way out according to her critics, May postponed the vote indefinitely to spare herself a humiliating loss.”

In Germany, Handelsblatt’s Carsten Volkery admired May’s “inexhaustible capacity for suffering and unique stamina”. But, the paper said, “what up until recently prompted respect in both friends and opponents, now increasingly sparks confusion and incomprehension”.

Parliament’s rejection of the deal shows “not only shows the complete powerlessness of the prime minister”, Handeslblatt said, but underlines the extent to which May “nurtured the illusions of the Brexit hardliners”.

Her attempt to seek concessions from the EU is doomed, because it “will not give May what she wants to satisfy her critics”. For Britain, it is not a good look: the prime minister “cannot be honest even at this late stage”, and too many MPs “continue to insist their full demands be met, rather than accept a necessary compromise”.

In Spain, El País editorial writer Iñaki Gabilondo said Britain was now “in the quagmire” after a referendum “that has not ceased delivering displeasure since the very moment it was born”.

Italy’s Corriere della Serra spoke of May’s “most difficult day … marked by open laughter and screams of mockery”, while Gaia Cesare, writing in Il Giornale, described May’s decision as a “desperate, last-minute move” designed to “save Brexit, the country and herself” that only “adds chaos to chaos”.

In Sweden, Therese Larsson Hultin, writing in Svenska Dagbladet, said May’s decision meant Britain had gone from “great uncertainty about Brexit, to complete chaos. For the simple truth is that no one, absolutely no one, knows what will happen until the British leave the union at midnight on 29 March next year.”

The prime minister may attempt to “seek help from the continent in the eleventh hour”, the paper said, “but the question is just how helpful her European colleagues can, and want, to be.”

Denmark’s Berlingske made the same point. “When exactly does the EU decide it’s had enough of rolling May’s Brexit rock up the mountain?” it asked. “And just what is the EU able – and willing – to do to help her once more?”