How quickly everybody has seen through the Empress’s new clothes

THE Tories are learning that it is very difficult to build a personality cult around a leader with no personality.

When Theresa May launched the election campaign, she went to the country with the flimsiest of offerings.

Her cautious pitch was the suspect claim that she provided strong and stable leadership. It is fitting that an election that began with a broken promise – recall the seven times she ruled out a snap poll? – came unstuck because it rested on a falsehood. The person who sabotaged the Tory campaign was the party leader.

Riding towards a coronation, she crashed the state coach by unveiling the Dementia Tax and then rowing straight back on the plan.

Far from being a pillar of strength, the PM was shown to be brittle and desperate. A pattern ignored when she was coasting towards victory became pertinent again: the change of mind on Brexit, the Budget U-turn on NI contributions and dilly-dallying

on the election all point to a leader who winces at the sound of gunfire.

Once people saw through the Empress’s new clothes, the more obvious her limitations appeared.

Mrs May’s lack of imagination and inability to connect was encapsulated in an interview with the Plymouth Herald when she answered four questions with: “I am very clear that…” Then there were excuses for not taking part in the TV debates, which included the accusation that Jeremy Corbyn was making too many TV appearances – which she said while she was appearing on TV.

If nothing else, the campaign has shown that behind the myth of the bloody difficult woman lies an evasive, narrow-minded, indecisive politician.