Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
VERDICT
Pledge to offer strong & stable government is sourest joke
LONG after this slapstick government has tripped over its feet on the way to the exit door we will still be chuckling at the greatest joke of all – Theresa May’s promise to provide strong and stable leadership.
Forget the excruciating demise of Gordon Brown, the chaos of John Major and the painful three years when Jim Callaghan was in charge.
There is no precedent for the incompetent, inept, shambolic, substandard and amateurish conduct of this current administration.
In seven days the Prime Minister has lost two Cabinet ministers, overseen a botched reshuffle, seen her deputy investigated for allegedly having “extreme” pornography on an office computer and witnessed her blundering Foreign Secretary endanger the life of a British citizen.
The cross-continental farce of yesterday’s dismissal of Priti Patel makes us a global laughing stock.
This is not a functioning government. It is one where anarchy has become the new normal.
DYSFUNCTIONAL
At the centre is a PM drained of confidence, shorn of authority and too timid to make executive decisions.
In normal times to have such a dysfunctional government would be troubling. When it is engaged in the most important set of negotiations this country has undertaken for 75 years it is calamitous.
Mrs May is so busy fire-fighting the latest scandal, self-inflicted blunder or act of ministerial treachery she has no time to focus on Brexit nor the litany of other problems facing this country.
Instead she lurches from crisis to crisis, a prisoner of a party too scared of getting shot of her yet in complete agreement she is not up to the job.
Madame Tussauds unveiled a wax work of the Mrs May yesterday.
Many will conclude a dummy would make a better hash of running the country than the barely functioning PM presiding over the chamber of horrors that is the government.
Read more at mirror.co.uk/authors/ jason-beattie/ THERESA May’s leadership was plunged into turmoil last night as she had to axe her second Cabinet minister in seven days.
Priti Patel, 45, quit over her damaging secret meetings with Israeli officials and PM Benjamin Netanyahu that could have left the impression Britain favours Tel Aviv over Palestine.
The International Development Secretary was hastily summoned back from a trip to Africa as further details of her meetings emerged.
In chaotic scenes Mrs May, who had already fired Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon over harassment claims, had to wait 30 hours before she could finally axe Ms Patel.
And even then her strong and stable leadership mantra came crashing down after she allowed the disgraced politician to say she had resigned rather than been sacked.
Mrs May also had to deny claims