Theresa May faces the prospect of winning a sizeable majority in the coming June elections, with her main focus being on negotiating Britian's exit from the European Union.
Political analysts have started speculating on what Britian would look like under her leadership in the next five years.
Tony Blair has called on voters to back the Coservative or Liberal Democrat candidates if they wished to oppose “Brexit at any cost.”
Blair said he was advocating a new dimension to the election to unite the Remain voters behind candidates prepared to reject a bad deal for the UK. The pro-EU campaign group Open Britain is also getting together a list of soft BREXIT candidates from all parties to help voters decide who to support.
Blair said he would vote Labour on June 8 but Brexit was bigger than party allegience and people should back the best anti-Brexit candidate. He believed that May was reasonable on Brexit. “She's very sensible, very decent person, she's very solid, I agree with a lot she says,” he said to The Times.
Economists are also watching the Prime Minister's Brexit policies closely – the immigration policy being the front-runner, as many fear the country's shortage of skilled workers will be aggravated if EU citizens are cut off.
May has worked closely with David Cameron to bring immigration down to 100,000 per year, while she was the Home Secretary. As a PM, she defied push from senior members to take foreign students out of the UK's immigration figures, bringing down the hopes of University vice-chancellors who fear the policy will deter overseas applicants.
But May will continue to include international students in her immigration policies (134,000 recorded in September) and she is keen to ensure the universities take only the “brightest and best” foreign students in the overall target. May had said that she wants sustainable net immigration in the country, that sustainable net immigration is in the tens of thousands. The cumbersome idea of 'barista's visas' to fill low-skilled jobs and certain steps to recognise the rights of UK-based EU nationals to stay in Britain after Brexit are apparent changes.
May's intentions of making UK an attractive place to do business has to be backed-up by flexibility- since the operations will be difficult to carry on unless the businesses are able to bring in their own workers, or have to make do with locals who do not the know-how.
Pickering said in The Sunday Telegraph: Britain has the option to do other things to raise its potential supply, like encourage more investment, set up non-EU trade deals, reform the housing market, the energy market and that things that cause long-term problems.
May has already demonstrated that she is not hesitant to increase investment. She pushed ahead approvals for improving infrastructure projects like the HS2 rail link, the Heathrow expansion and Hinkley Point nuclear plant. The Chancellor also announced a £30 billion investment spending per year. This is a rather major modification from the previous governments that have focussed largely on restraining investment spending.
Philip Hammond also stuck to the former disbursement plans in his Autumn statement and his first budget last month. He slowed down in anticipation of an unrealised economic slowdown, that meant managing the spending and expenditures carefully. A Conservative spokesman told The Times that “every vote for other parties as Tony Blair seems to be suggesting, will weaken our negotiating hand and lead to Jeremy Corbyn in Downing Street at the helm of coalition of the chaos. That would have grave consequences for our nation's future.”
Kier Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary told The Guardian that the only way to stop hard Brexit was to vote in Labour. This election will be crucial in shaping how Britain approaches Brexit negotiations and there is a clear choice on the ballot paper.