Our Supreme Leader will bore her way to victory

THERESA MAY is already attracting criticism from the media for being dull, and the likelihood is that during the next few weeks she will get a lot duller. She exposes herself as rarely as possible to spontaneous questioning from journalists or from anyone else, and during the Election she will repeat a small number of messages with remorseless frequency, so that reporters are driven mad as they hear about ‘strong and stable leadership’ for the millionth time.

But for the wider public, her refusal to pander to the media only strengthens her reputation – established during her six years at the Home Office – as a politician who will not be pushed around. Her avoidance of chummy dinners with MPs or journalists, and a preference for going on a walking holiday in North Wales with only her spouse for company (not something Dave is ever likely to have suggested to Sam, or Tony to Cherie), is inexpressibly refreshing.

For much of the time, all she offers the media is a changing wardrobe of fashionable clothes,

which tell us nothing about what she is thinking. Her manner is more presidential than we have seen since Tony Blair was in his prime. In some respects, it is more presidential, for Mr Blair was forced to share power with Gordon Brown.

Nowadays the Treasury contains no older, scowling genius who believes he has been cheated out of the top job. It contains Philip Hammond, Mrs May’s Oxford contemporary, capable on his day of being at least as dull as she is, but a diminished figure since his Budget U-turn over National Insurance.

Boris Johnson is likewise kept in his place, which is in the Foreign Office or on world tours talking to foreigners, after which the Prime Minister can sweep in, emanating greater seriousness than he has yet attained, and do the final deal with Berlin, Brussels or Washington.

There is something faintly North Korean about this level of control. Only the Supreme Leader’s pronouncements matter, and we must wait for her to speak before we know what the line is.

She wrong-footed pretty much everyone with her Election announcement, delivered by her alone on the Downing Street stage. It was closely followed by the news that she is not going to diminish herself – and take the foolish risk which so damaged David Cameron in 2010 – by debating live on television against Labour and the Lib Dems.

All this is tiresome for journalists, who crave the excitement of something going wrong with the Conservative campaign. It is especially disappointing for the selfimportant panjandrums of the television studios, who yearn to have the PM at their beck and call.

But it is inexpressibly reassuring for voters. They want a grown-up in charge of Brexit – a project quite exciting enough without entrusting it to an adolescent. By her steely reticence, Mrs May indicates she will be a tough negotiator, who will not undermine her country by showing too soon what cards she has in her hand.

For her, to be boring makes perfect sense. People like boring. It is part of being respectable. ‘I feel she’s got standards,’ a shire Tory told me last week.

Middle England values proper behaviour. We want our neighbours to be respectable, considerate types, not given to leaving old mattresses in the front garden or holding all-night parties.

The Prime Minister’s entire demeanour breathes the most genuine and sincere respectability. Here is someone who, like Margaret Thatcher, has never done anything scruffy in her whole life. However much Mr Corbyn’s handlers try to smarten him up, it is clear he is by instinct a scruffy, self-indulgent revolutionary, proud to look a bit of a mess.

No normal person wants to listen to the Prime Minister, or to any other politician, the whole time. If we tune in occasionally and find she is saying the same as she did last month, we are more likely to give her credit for consistency than criticise her for lack of imagination.

As long as you have worked out something sensible to say, there is a kind of wisdom in saying it over and over again. World-weary sophisticates will lament the sheer boredom of the election campaign. The Prime Minister knows it is a winning strategy.

For her, being boring makes perfect sense – we like dull