How long can Maybot hide feelings?
SOMETIMES in politics it’s quite useful to be underestimated.
Theresa May knew for a full 48 hours before she sacked her best friend and Cabinet colleague Damian Green that she was going to pull the plug on his career.
You couldn’t have told that from her appearances in the Commons or in front of the liaison committee on Wednesday afternoon.
The only clue was that camera access to the last Cabinet meeting of the year on Tuesday was cancelled with just 10 minutes’ notice.
Other than that, all was normal on the surface. The deadpan “Maybot” persona is a handy mask for all kinds of situations.
Underneath May is flesh and blood – and having to sack a friend she has known since university days, for more than 40 years, over such a tawdry episode must have weighed heavily on her.
Sympathy should be with Kate Maltby, the journalist who made the claims of predatory behaviour against Green in the first place and has had to endure misogynistic attacks Matthew Hopkins, the Witchfinder General of the English Civil War, would have been envious of.
But in one year May has endured a general election humiliation and lost her closest advisers, Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill, and three (count ‘em) Cabinet ministers. Yet she still marches robotically on.
When voters look at her, many of them Remainers who know Brexit is the biggest act of economic self-harm to be inflicted on the country, what will they see next year?
She looks like the lonely ice maiden but we know she has feelings too. Will May, in her heart of hearts, go through with this?