At last, a leader who understands Britain

FIVE days ago, this paper said Theresa May remained something of an enigma after six years with her head down at the Home Office. Like the rest of the country, we wanted to know more about her vision for Britain and what makes her tick.

Yesterday, in straightforward language – and with the quiet assurance of a leader clear in her aims and confident of her ability to achieve them – she gave us the answers we sought.

Indeed, this was an historic speech, raising the curtain on a new age for Britain as a self-governing nation state – and telling us more in one hour about what the new Prime Minister stands for than we learned about David Cameron in his six years at the helm.

Above all, it was the speech of a woman who understands the great mass of British voters, whose fears and aspirations have been ignored by the political class for so long.

More than this, she actually likes the people fate has chosen her to lead, sharing their concerns and love of country with a genuine fellow-feeling unheard from an occupant of No 10 since the days of the great Margaret Thatcher.

True, many have remarked that parts of her speech – on workers’ rights, taxdodging fat cats and state intervention – might have been written by Ed Miliband or even Jeremy Corbyn.

But this was no cynical, focus group-driven invasion of the Left’s territory – effective though it may be in attracting Labour voters dismayed by their party’s descent into idiocy.

Rather, the PM was voicing her own view (shared by millions, including this paper) that while capitalism is the engine of prosperity, it is too often abused to exploit the vulnerable and enrich the immoral.

Yes, this paper has some concerns about how Mrs May’s planned spending splurge on infrastructure will square with cutting the deficit – and we have worries about interventionism. It will also be a delicate balancing act to protect workers’ rights and crack down on fat cats without driving jobs elsewhere.

But since when have social justice, decent treatment of workers, efficient public services or, indeed, the NHS, been the exclusive province of the Left? Meanwhile, can anyone imagine Mr Miliband (let alone Mr Corbyn) delivering the Prime Minister’s passionate defence of our heroic armed forces: ‘We will never again let those activist, Leftwing human rights lawyers harangue and harass the bravest of the brave’? Can anyone see Labour echoing her pledge to help savers and defend the Union and the family – or launching her savage attack on the arrogant liberal elite?

‘Just listen to the way a lot of politicians and commentators talk about the public,’ she said. ‘They find your patriotism distasteful, your concerns about immigration parochial, your views about crime illiberal, your attachment to your job security inconvenient.

‘They find the fact that 17million voters decided to leave the European Union simply bewildering.’

Indeed, this was the day the Great Ignored and Disenfranchised finally found a powerful advocate in No 10. Mrs May showed she understands Brexit was not just a cry for sovereignty and control of our borders. It was a howl of protest against corporate arrogance and the remote political elites who have taken voters for granted for decades.

Of course, with her slim majority and a hostile Lords, she will face huge difficulties. And in confronting that liberal elite, she has taken on a formidable enemy which will never give up.

But this was a magnificent start. No longer an enigma, Mrs May has set the tone for her Premiership and post-Brexit Britain. If she can match action to her words, greatness will be within her grasp.