Inscrutable May exasperates colleagues

Like so many whose lives have brushed with Theresa May’s, my first meeting with her left almost no impression. It was in the 1990s and she had invited me to speak at her Maidenhead Conservative association’s annual dinner.

We must have spent two or three hours together, she, her husband, Philip, and I – and all that sticks in the memory is a certain stiffness (but not unfriendliness), no political conversation and a faint intimation that for her these occasions were more duty than pleasure. In this and subsequent encounters, Philip May was a quiet but always significant presence. It was not surprising to see him in the Commons gallery for her tough test on Wednesday.

My second encounter was more revealing. When she was still home secretary, she made a tour of East Midlands activists that culminated in a big dinner in Derbyshire, surprising many of us with a strong, if fairly empty, speech and seemed relaxed and in command. Questions from the audience were respectful and she fielded them competently.

Then Edwina Currie, who had been MP for a neighbouring constituency, got up. Her husband is a retired senior police officer. Not long before, Mrs May had made a pugnacious speech to the Police Federation, with whom she clashed. Mrs Currie’s question was courteous but critical, suggesting Mrs May had failed to support the police.

She fell apart, like a TV presenter whose Autocue had gone on the blink. Mentally or emotionally unprepared for a hostile question from a friendly audience, she floundered. She could have responded either with diplomacy or fightback, but both failed her. I was shocked. A senior cabinet minister, sometimes spoken of as a future leader, who, faced with the unforeseen, seemed entirely incapable of busking it.

My next encounter, during the 2017 general election campaign, was arguably the closest and I didn’t even meet her. For the BBC’s Newsnight programme I was asked to write a documentary whose working title was Who is Theresa May? She and her team would have nothing to do with it. But I did have a long and frank interview with an old university friend.

She told me of the young Theresa Brasier’s method of road-testing young men in her search for the right boyfriend, even testing their knowledge of cricket. There were curious echoes of the young Margaret Roberts’ trialling of boyfriends, as described in Charles Moore’s biography of Baroness Thatcher. Here, it seemed, were two young women with an almost coldly strategic approach to the selection and pursuit of life goals. Interestingly, the friend suggested she had not been a great admirer of Lady Thatcher’s rather ‘‘right-wing’’ politics. Nor had she much doubt that even as an undergraduate, her friend had dreamt of the top job.

Even to her friends she was an enigma, whose hard outer shell was easy to know and describe, but whose interior was a mystery. Nobody thought she was stupid and nobody thought she was brilliant. Everyone thought her determined. Nobody praised her powers of communication or persuasion. Nobody called her warm. Everyone admired her stamina. The picture of a single-minded, unsentimental and almost relentless woman was forming. But there was something missing. What did she want to make of her job? What, to her, was leadership for? To whom, if anyone, did she confide hopes, fears, love or affection?

I have since been learning how her Commons colleagues see her. And it’s the same old problem. What does she want? What does she think? While some are mystified by her inscrutability, many are now exasperated.

My last encounter with her was not long after she became prime minister. Being regarded as a ‘‘friendly’’ journalist, I was invited to Downing St for coffee. It was appalling. I had arrived with one thought in mind: to warn her the Tory right would never be her friends, and she should not lose the respect of Tory moderates. But instead of engaging, all I got was what sounded like extracts from old speeches.

I arrived as a supporter, and departed dismayed. Win though she did on Wednesday, hundreds of her MPs have made the same transition.

The Times