Theresa May chose to play a lone game
Widdecombe
IAM sorry for Theresa May but vastly more sorry for two friends, David Burrowes and Julian Brazier, who lost their seats, sacrificed on the altar of one woman’s vanity. Both are good family men and active Christians who have devoted themselves to their constituents but were reduced to a mere afterthought as Theresa May spoke of herself and her position.
I have commented before on this page about Theresa May’s propensity to have her head turned but that was in the relatively trivial matter of fashion. I wrote about how, in response to the attention paid to her leopard-skin shoes she went completely over the top, filling her office with leopard-patterned cushions and parading as a fashion icon in choices so bad they provoked ridicule among us when she walked through the lobbies.
This time her head was turned by comparisons to Maggie, by the portrayal of Theresa as a strong and powerful woman, by the belief that she could win an entire election campaign on such a basis. Sorry, Theresa, you are but a pale shadow of Lady Thatcher.
Compared with Cameron and Osborne, whose gloating in the case of the latter tells us why we were so glad to see him go, Theresa May is a grown-up politician who understands the grass roots of her party whom Cameron dismissed as swiveleyed loons. Her problem is that she doesn’t understand her colleagues because she has no time for any of them.
Her strategy at Westminster has been to stand apart, avoid association with any grouping and to play a lone game. The most obvious demonstration of that was the referendum when Theresa, as home secretary and in charge of one of the biggest issues – immigration – stayed below the parapets, contributing virtually nothing. It enabled her to then stand as leader without having offended either side. She and I served in the same shadow cabinet but I cannot recollect ever having had so much as a coffee or a drink with her.
It may have worked at Westminster and taken her to Number Ten, which was her ambition from the off, but translated to an election campaign it was a hopeless strategy. For the first time in decades the Conservatives were espousing grammar schools but where was the education secretary? Corbyn was offering a package which would bankrupt Britain but where was the chancellor? Where was the party chairman, a down-to-earth former miner who could have done so much for the Conservative image? All we seemed to get was Theresa May. The same was true of the election literature. A BRITISH Nutrition Foundation survey finds that more than a quarter of primary school children thinks cheese comes from plants and 10 per cent of teenagers believe fruit pastilles are healthy. Amongst other findings, 13 per cent of With appalling hubris, candidates were described as “Theresa May’s candidate” instead of the Conservative Party’s candidate and all because her head was so comprehensively turned that she believed she alone was the key to winning and that her colleagues were irrelevant.
Thus when brand May was wobbly, eight to 11-year-olds think pasta comes from animals while a fifth of five to seven-year-olds is convinced that fish fingers are made of chicken.
It all sounds appalling but if you turn the figures round then 75, 90, 87 per cent and four everything else was wobbly too. Neither Mrs May nor this administration can last five years. Governments which have no effective majority or only a very slender one and which struggle on go down to catastrophic defeat as both Callaghan and Major can testify and defeat would mean Corbyn in Number Ten.
TURN THE SURVEY RESULTS AROUND AND LOOK WHAT HAPPENS
fifths respectively do not subscribe to these dimwitted notions. If we factor in the young age of some of those surveyed and allow for a range of intelligence and home backgrounds then it could be a lot worse. So well done, teachers!