May doesn't seem to want to make any concessions

Whoever is currently the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (UK) would face a huge challenge in managing Brexit. That's what Business Insider claims.

Several opinion polls suggest that British voters, on the one hand, want to get rid of the negative aspects of European Union (EU) membership. However, at the same time, they want to keep the benefits that membership brings. Making a deal that unites these 2 things is simply impossible.

No British Prime Minister could do that job. So it was not surprising that May's agreement with the EU was voted down on January 15 in the British House of Commons† On the other hand, the extent of the defeat was surprising.

May blunders tactically
You can see that May made the challenges she faced a little bigger each time. For example, May decided to activate Article 50 (the part of the European Treaty that deals with the withdrawal of a member state) before she had mapped out a clear Brexit strategy with her government. She then wasted months and years, negotiating more with her own party than with the EU.

The decision to call early elections in 2017 also took time. She was campaigning for weeks, with the end result: the loss of absolute majority of the Conservatives in the House of Commons. After her deal was voted down, May still doesn't seem to understand that she needs to fundamentally change tack to get a parliamentary majority behind her.

May .'s red lines
At the start of the Brexit procedure (2017), May had drawn a number of red lines. These related to customs regulations, immigration and the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice. Based on this, a fairly simple free trade agreement (the Canadian type) was possible. Most importantly, May's red lines made it inevitable that checks would be made at the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland.

At no point in the past 2 years has May May made an attempt to show understanding for the 48% of British voters who had chosen to remain in the EU. Nor has she ever approached opposition parties, which she needed to get a deal through parliament. Even now, after the historic defeat in the House of Commons, she is showing no signs of understanding that she needs to do things differently.

For now, May is sticking to her red lines and doesn't seem to want to accept a substantially different deal. With this, May's survival as prime minister seems to have become an obstacle to making compromises that a majority of the House of Commons can agree with. As long as Theresa May remains Prime Minister of the UK, the deadlock around Brexit does not appear to be broken.

Read more on Business Insider:
- A no deal is still an option; so it can disrupt the UK
- Theresa May survives no-confidence vote 
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