Theresa May: she was a closed book
Gaby Wood spent months shadowing the Prime Minister for Vogue – and her unrevealing manner was the most revealing thing of all
When I interviewed Theresa May in Downing Street earlier this year, I asked her if there were elements of the Opposition she respected. She hesitated a good while, and looked stern. It was the one moment in an unrevealing interview when she seemed to border interestingly on irritation.
“Um,” she finally said, staccato. I couldn’t help laughing a little. “I’m not asking you to praise this particular Opposition,” I said. “I mean historically, or theoretically…” A weak smile passed across her face as she exhaled and retreated to a formulation of words that was, characteristically, so bland as to be unusable in the course of professional journalism.
Looking back on that moment, it strikes me as a clear indication that, at the very least, May was inclined to underestimate the opposition to a grotesque degree.
The interview was for American Vogue. May did confess, a little sheepishly, that her desert island edition, as mentioned to Kirsty Young on Radio 4, would have been the British one. But this was what had been arranged, and it was a highly sensible move – no one in the US knew who she was, and she had just become a leader on the global stage. Here was the catch: no one in the UK really knew who she was either. And so, not only was it too soon to say what kind of prime minister she would be – a nervewracking situation for the writer – but one of the things that had to be conveyed was that she was widely considered to be an enigma. It was both an introduction, and an anti-introduction: I’d like you to meet… who?
An unkind thing to say would have been that May was not actually all that mysterious – she was merely dull. After all, her voting record, and her work at the Home Office, were there for all to see.
One reason the public didn’t know much about her was that the journalists whose job it was to report such things had long found her so uninteresting as to have turned their attention elsewhere. I didn’t say this, for two reasons. One: it told you more about the lack of curiosity in
May was inclined to underestimate the opposition to a grotesque degree
journalists than it did about May. And two: I didn’t actually find her uninteresting.
I disagree with May about many things, but there were three areas in which I felt I could describe her so that Vogue readers would be intrigued by her: her support for fellow women in her party; her work on the Modern Slavery Act; and her dry sense of humour.
In preparation, I asked some of her friends to tell me whether they thought she was funny. Oh yes, she’s very funny, they said – it’s one of the things few people understand about her. Excellent, I said. Could they suggest ways in which I might get her to be funny, so I could show that and not just say it? There was silence. “Good luck!” said one.
Before I seem ungracious, I should say that in writing the profile, I was given an extremely high level of access. For months, I shadowed May in her constituency, at a party in Downing Street, as she gave her Brexit speech at Lancaster House, and in the Commons, before I met her face-to-face.
The interview itself was negotiated like a peace treaty. “I think she realises that this is the moment when she needs to show more of herself,” said someone close to her. I sent a few questions in advance. Some were topics it seemed more useful for her to reflect on than for me to surprise her with, like books and paintings she liked and historical figures she admired. Others were more detailed memory triggers. (Any anecdotes about her father’s sermons? Did she remember a particular red dress she wore at university?), which I hoped would result in something like a riff, if not an outright reverie.