How on earth did May get this far in the f irst place?

THE signs of Theresa May’s humiliation were for all to see in Matthew Parris’s riveting profile of the British PM for Newsnight.

Screened a few days before the general election, it left this viewer scratching her head about how May rose so far in politics.

Even May’s dearest friends admitted she was devoid of social skills and that her inability to forge connections would be her undoing.

Several friends agreed that she didn’t have a firstclass mind but insisted it didn’t matter much in politics.

Another said that when presented with a new idea, May, pictured, would sometimes just say ‘no’ abruptly and refuse to discuss it.

Fallen Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg seemed to like her well enough but he was astounded by her lack of vision and impressed by her knack of using the power of silence to confound her colleagues or adversaries. It was the only thing he learned from her.

The abiding impression was of a highly organised if robotic leader with no personality to speak of but a passionate sense of justice and desire to represent the squeezed middle classes from which she, as a vicar’s daughter, sprang. Nothing wrong with that, in some respects.

But after her disastrous campaign, we can add delusional in defeat, cowardice, lack of conviction and arrogance to the picture. Let’s now see if she even gets as far as the Brexit negotiating table. The Tories are not called the nasty party for nothing.