Expert: Jury is out on Theresa May and verdict depends on what happens next
The jury remains out on Theresa May’s short but tumultuous time at Number
10, according to a leading constitutional expert.
May will resign on Wednesday after repeatedly failing to persuade the Commons to ratify her Brexit deal.
Her farewell to Downing Street comes just three years after replacing David Cameron following the Brexit referendum result, making her one of the shortest-serving prime ministers in British history.
But how she will be remembered will depend on the effect on the country of Brexit, according to Vernon Bogdanor, who tutored Cameron at Oxford.
The Research Professor at the Centre for British Politics and Government at King’s College London, said: “She negotiated an agreement with the EU which in my opinion was better than anything we had a right to expect.
“If we leave without a deal and that turns out badly, people might look nostalgically at Theresa May. If, on the other hand, it turns out well, she will be criticised.”
May’s failure to have her Brexit deal ratified in the Commons follows her decision to call a General Election two years ago, which cut the number of Tory MPs and forced her to reply on the DUP for support.
Prof Bogdanor said: “Had she won a large majority, as many thought she might, things would have been very different.
“But she didn’t prove to be an effective campaigner. Her main weakness was that she was not a good communicator to the general public.
“She came twice to seminars I gave on British government when I was at Oxford. She was quite different from her public image. She wasn’t in the least robotic.
“She stayed for dinner with the dons and they gave her the usual gripes about higher education. But she engaged very fairly with them, charmed everyone and made the most favourable impression.”
Prof Bogdanor said Tory MPs are more to blame than Mrs May for Britain’s predicament.
He said: “If they thought the Irish border backstop was an impossible thing to support, they should have told her at the time she was negotiating.
“Theresa May only knew the backstop was a problem a few weeks before the vote. The MPs not only rejected the deal but everything else – a referendum, no deal, the internal market, a customs union. They were against everything but in favour of nothing. I think they are much more open to criticism than she is.”
Prof Bogdanor said that, unlike May, her likely successor Boris Johnson has “stardust” and is a “brilliant communicator”.
However he said: “Boris is an unknown quantity, more than any Prime Minister in modern times.
“Most of them have been the Leader of the Opposition or held a Cabinet post for many years.
“But Boris was Foreign Secretary for a very short period. We just don’t know how he will handle the job.”