The cult of May
The British “like a warrior queen”, said A.N. Wilson in The Spectator. When Mrs Thatcher sent a task force to recapture the Falklands, “the bossyboots of Finchley plumbed the wells of mother worship and nanny reverence which lurks in the British unconscious”; she tapped into a tradition that reaches back to Queen Elizabeth I addressing the troops at Tilbury as the Spanish Armada entered the Channel. Now Theresa May is starting to emerge as a leader in the same mould. Certainly, the image of strength that the Tories have projected around the PM seems popular with the electorate, said Toby Helm in The Observer. In the former Labour stronghold of Dewsbury, in West Yorkshire, for instance, you can find plenty of voters willing to take a chance on May. “She is a strong woman and she will lead a strong government,” says one wavering lifelong Labour supporter. “I think she’s a cracking lass, I do,” says another. “She talks to you straight. I don’t know which way I’ll vote. I could vote for May.”
“The cult of the personality which has grown up around Mother Theresa is nauseating,” said Richard Littlejohn in the Daily Mail. An election that was meant to be about Brexit is morphing into one “designed to install May as an absolute monarch”. Her name is plastered all over the campaign posters and battle buses. The slogans “Theresa May for Britain” and “Strong and stable leadership” are everywhere; the word “Conservative” is barely visible. All the “soft soap, sofa interviews in the world can’t disguise the rampant megalomania”. Even top Tories “now feel like passengers heading in a direction they don’t quite recognise, for reasons they don’t quite understand”, said Fraser Nelson in The Daily Telegraph. Policy seems to be dictated by May and her inner circle, and much of it isn’t even recognisably Tory: workers’ rights, pay caps, a 1970s-style industrial strategy. Initially, when she seemed high-handed and out of step with her MPS, she was told she’d have to change her style to manage the party. “Now, it seems she’s changing the party to match her style.”
The Conservatives’ battle plan, devised by campaign chief Lynton Crosby, makes sense, said Dominic Lawson in The Sunday Times. May’s poll lead over Jeremy Corbyn is double that of the Tories’ over Labour; that’s a lead they want to exploit. They are also making a “bold grab” for Brexit supporters who have never voted Tory before. But there are now real concerns about “the May supremacy”. Ministers already live “in almost constant fear of dressing-downs” from May’s mighty joint chiefs of staff, Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill, who fiercely protect their “secretive, politically friendless” boss. The Chancellor, Philip Hammond, has been on the end of “some astonishingly hostile briefing by No. 10” after standing up to her. We can only hope that if May wins a “colossal personal mandate” on 8 June, it gives her the confidence “not to run a cabinet of fearful mediocrity”.