Firm May forges ahead
SHE WANTS TO BE KNOWN AS PM WHO MOVED BRITAIN OUT OF EUROPE
Described herself as a ‘goody two shoes’ whose faith defined her upbringing.
Theresa May wants to go down in history as the prime minister who safely steered Britain out of Europe, a cause she did not believe in when the Brexit referendum was held.
The internal struggles and contradictions of the Oxford-educated daughter of a vicar reflect those tearing apart her island nation before its March divorce from the EU.
The Financial Times has askeded whether the 62-year-old could be “Britain’s Angela Merkel”, the German leader who embodies Europe, while an op-ed in the Independent condemned her for waging an “anti-immigrant vendetta”.
Her ability to keep intact her policies and composure through a cascade of crises have drawn invariable comparisons to the iron will of the late Margaret Thatcher.
It is a doggedness that permeates May’s entire demeanour, a perceived robotic mannerism and monotone that earned her the “Maybot” moniker.
May described herself in a 2012 interview as a “goody two shoes” whose Protestant faith defined her upbringing.
She listened to cricket matches on the radio with her father and knew that she wanted to become a politician when she was only 12.
May studied geography and met her husband, Philip, at Oxford before joining England’s central bank.
The two never had children and May devoted herself to a life of public service that saw her become Conservative Party chairperson in 2002.
May made her first splash by telling her Tories at an annual conference to stop being “the nasty party” if they wanted to unseat then-popular Labour leader Tony Blair.
But her 2010-16 stint as Home Secretary saw May adopt isolationist rhetoric that included a vow to create “a really hostile environment for illegal migration”.
“In the UK illegally?” asked one advert the Home Office put on a couple of vans that drove around the country in 2013. Yet May’s own faith in a “great, global” Britain did not translate into a rejection of the European Union as a whole.
She wanted to retake control of Britain’s laws and borders while keeping London a magnet of world talent and financial wealth.
May did not campaign for the “Leave” vote ahead of the 2016 referendum and made clear on several occasions that Britain benefited from staying in the world’s largest single market.
“Britain is too small a country to cope outside the European Union,” she said in an April 2016 address.
May later told a private Goldman Sachs gathering that “the economic arguments are clear” for Britain staying in the bloc.
“There are definitely things we can do as members of the European Union that I think keep us more safe,” she said in remarks that were later leaked to the press.
But Britons voted to split by a 52-48 margin and May took over from David Cameron as prime minister after winning a 2016 leadership contest in which she proclaimed: “Brexit means Brexit”.
It became her mantra, a gritty determination to bear down and get the job done no matter the political cost. –AFP
There are things we can do that can keep us safe