Theresa May: From good to bad in less than 3 years

Just over three years ago, Mrs. May became the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Her ascension into office wasn’t totally unexpected. She was well known as one of the three presumptive heirs to lead the government once David Cameron tired of pretending to be a leader. 

It was always ever going to be between her, George Osborne and Boris Johnson. Osborne was considered the favourite given his very close personal and political relationship with Cameron but Boris was always my preference. He commanded a base within the Conservative Party without actually having the power of patronage.  I believed Osborne and Cameron were silly schoolboys who played ideological games with people’s lives. Mrs. May appeared to me to be somewhat on the fringes of the party.

As fate would have it, it was Mrs. May who got the crown. Once the country voted to leave the EU and Cameron resigned, Osborne was fatally damaged by association.

Johnson’s leadership bid was torpedoed by the ‘Govely’ snake and Mrs. May became Prime Minister. I still remember her speech outside Downing Street in July 2016. Her comments about social justice, equality and the common man resonated with me and with many. It was a profound departure from the malevolent politics of George Osborne. She topped it off by firing both Osborne and Gove and disavowing the type of politics they both played.

There is a school of thought that powerful men in the Conservative Party conspired to dump the Brexit conundrum on Mrs. May as they could foresee it was going to be a thankless job and a career destroyer.  I don’t know if this is true but it appears believable.

From losing out spectacularly in 2016, Boris is now poised to become Prime Minister. Although you can never rule out a spectacular upset from Jeremy Hunt. Boris Johnson has been endorsed George Osborne through the newspaper he edits. It is rumoured that Michael Gove has been lined up for a senior role in what could be a Boris Johnson government. There are even reports of David Cameron offering some support to Boris. The old gang is back as Mrs. May departs.

When she stood outside Downing Street on 13 July 2016, Mrs. May speech promised so much but sadly it went downhill from there.  That speech was about as good as it ever was for her prime ministership.

She is not your conventional politician. The type that is all charisma and bullshit. She reveled in her characterization as not being clubbable and in Ken Clarke’s description of her as a bloody difficult woman. Meanwhile political deals are done in smoke filled rooms and in the dead of night.

While her personal attributes helped her achieve the pinnacle of her career, they also made it difficult for her to succeed as a Prime Minister especially the one to deliver a national consensus on what has been described as the UK’s toughest task since the second world war.

She started by wanting to live up to her reputation but ended up looking pitiful and begging MPs to do her a favour.  I am aware that the results of the election in 2017 severely hampered her but the outcome was on her. It was her decision to call the election, she superintended the running of the election and when the handwriting was on the wall even after the election, she allowed her cabinet walk all over her and set the tone for the mess we have now.

Unfortunately Mrs. May was a politician for another era. Not this one when politicians and voters love their extremes. She chose to be all things to all people in the guise of reasonableness and maturity. While her opposite numbers in Europe pretended to be grown ups but laughed at her and offered her a deal filled with a huge legal hole that made it difficult for any reasonable person to sign up.

She allowed herself to be hobbled by those who didn’t want the UK to have a strong negotiation position. No deal planning was reportedly delayed by Phil Hammond. Successive Brexit Secretaries of State were sidelined. Concessions repeatedly made to the EU in return for very little. All in her desire to get a deal that ultimately failed to command a Commons majority.

She realized very late in the day that Brexit was a national project and that she should have involved all the major political parties in the delivery of it. This should have been from the get go not this Damascene realization that was then turned into a circus with Labour and Corbyn playing her like a guitar.

She underestimated how determined the Remainers are to scuttle Brexit and didn’t realize how each and every one of her missteps emboldened them. She unilaterally set preconditions and then unilaterally tore up those preconditions without getting one concession.

Her tenure in office is a stark lesson to any leader and any student of management or politics. It is not how you start, it is not what you stand for or the goodwill you bring into the office. My advice is to stand for something and leave if what you stand for cannot be achieved.

David Cameron should never have promised a referendum. He did it to win an election but the prize he thought he had won ended up as a poisoned chalice. As soon as Mrs. May didn’t win the 2017 election in a resounding way, she should have publicly called time on her plans and be upfront with the public. But she carried on sailing a boat that was obviously taking in water.

She now leaves the United Kingdom in a worse place than she met it. While she won’t be the worst Prime Minister ever as this is reserved for David Cameron, she comes a close second when a list of terrible modern day Prime Ministers is drawn up.

Despite her shortcomings as a Prime Minister, I believe she is a thoroughly decent human albeit a misguided one. In this time of extremism, she tried to be a centrist and ended up being alone. It is sad to see her single handedly shoulder the failure of this government.  Senior members of her cabinet like Phil Hammond definitely did her and the UK a disservice. They will rather lie down and be supplicant to the EU than see the UK assert itself.  They will rather the EU dictate when the UK should hold elections and what political decisions the UK should make.

They are not prepared to hold the EU to any account especially for its role in ensuring that Leave won the Brexit referendum by refusing the UK’s reasonable demands in 2015. The most contentious of those demands has now been included in the withdrawal agreement the EU has offered to the UK.

How can Mrs. Merkel not realize that her decision to allow over a million refugees into Germany and ultimately anywhere in Europe will have a bearing on anti EU sentiment?

Those who are determined to have a second referendum should be very wary if and when that time comes. If there are three questions on the ballot i.e. leave without a deal, leave with a deal or Remain, the latter will lose the referendum again. This is clear from the result of the last EU election.

As Mrs. May departs, I hope the new Prime Minister will do a better job than she has done. When I thought it couldn’t get any worse than Davey Boy Cameron, she proved me wrong. It could still get worse; Jeremy Corbyn might be Prime Minister by Christmas. By February 14, 2020, we might be romanticizing Mrs. May’s tenure as Prime Minister.

Baba Grumpy works in financial services in the United Kingdom. He blogs mostly about football at http://babagrumpy.blogspot.co.uk. His Twitter handle is @BabaGrumpy