Theresa May will be forgotten, but never forgiven
We can only hope that the PM got her kitten heels resoled recently. Taxi for May!
Correct me if I’m wrong, but at Chequers on Friday, Theresa May threatened her ministers with the sack if they insisted on sticking up for promises in their own manifesto. She confiscated her class’s – sorry, Cabinet’s – phones, and told them they would be replaced by talented colleagues and “soon be forgotten” if they resigned over Brexit, or Bremain as it’s now called. Anyone who refused to collude with her “agreement” would instantly lose their ministerial car and face the humiliation of departing on foot. Well, after the damning resignations of David Davis and Boris Johnson, and given the disappointment and disgust that her plan provoked, we can only hope that the PM got her kitten heels resoled recently. Taxi for Mrs May! She has to go, she really does. The PM has defied the single biggest vote in our history and let down the 82.4per cent of the electorate who backed parties that said they were committed to leaving the European Union at the general election. She has been downright evasive and betrayed those who put their faith in her. At a stroke, with a plan that ties us to EU regulations for goods, while making it almost impossible to sign trade deals of our own, the PM alienated the 45per cent of Ukip voters who switched their preference to the Conservatives in the 2017 election. The poor Kippers were apparently under the impression that “Brexit means Brexit” meant, well, Brexit. These are the same trusting souls who, following that suicide vest of a manifesto, narrowly kept Mrs May in Downing Street. They won’t make that mistake again. Meanwhile, upon hearing of the Great Chequers Sellout, in the Northern heartlands, where one in six Labour Leave voters turned to the Tories, furious members of the proletariat were chucking cans of Newkie Brown at the telly and muttering foul, gynaecological oaths unknown to vicar’s daughters from Eastbourne.
“My husband voted Tory to get Brexit. Now he says he’ll vote Corbyn, even though he’s a c---, just to f--- May”, ran one typically thoughtful reaction on social media. How many other disillusioned voters privately share that sentiment?
We are told that Mrs May’s come-shaft-us-now-michel plan must prevail because of “the parliamentary arithmetic”. How about Tory MPS, who are interested in keeping their seats, focusing their minds on this arithmetic: the Conservative vote last year was composed of 71per cent Leave voters and 29per cent Remain. Stick that up your Juncker, Theresa.
Little wonder that a poll from Sky Data on Monday night revealed that 64per cent of Britons do not trust the PM to run Brexit negotiations, and just 22 per cent now believe she will do the best possible deal. Even worse, Jeremy Corbyn’s party has edged ahead in the polls. The Tories are down three points to 38per cent, while Labour is up two to 40 per cent.
People aren’t stupid, whatever the Remain condescendi might think. They can see that Mrs May’s Brexit plan will make us free in the same way a prisoner on probation is free: let out of the EU jail, but obliged to wear an electronic tag around our ankle.
Outside the Westminster bubble, the country is wishing fervently that the entire political class could be replaced by the England team. If Gareth Southgate’s squad has changed the national weather, causing mass elation with outbreaks of smiling and hope, that’s because our footballers have a belief their country can take on the best and, with guts, humility and perseverance, even triumph. As my new hero, Jordan Pickford, said, trying to explain his success as a goalkeeper: “I’m not the biggest, but I’m mentally strong and I’ve got me agility.” Good at saving his country from foreign attacks, too.
If only a few drops of essence of Pickford could be dropped into Mrs May’s cocoa. The 24-year-old, babyfaced Sunderland boy better embodies the spirit of Britain than our nervous Nellie Prime Minister. I know which “safe pair of hands” I prefer.
Whatever you think of Boris’s motives (and cynical timing), his resignation letter expressed with furious eloquence what millions of people feel about an “opening bid” to Brussels that positions us as grateful supplicants rather than world leaders in intelligence, science, design, defence, acting, engineering, higher education, technology and – O frabjous day! – football. “It is as though we are sending our vanguard into battle with the white flags fluttering above them,” cried Boris. There was no doubt who he had in mind when he said that the Brexit dream was dying, “suffocated by needless self-doubt”.
Mrs May has depressed us long enough. In July 2016, when the UK’S second female prime minister entered Downing Street for the first time, hopes were high that we had found another Maggie Thatcher. Little did we know she would turn out to be Ted Heath 2.
I already had my doubts. Interviewing Mrs May back in 2012, when she was home secretary, I struggled to get her to say a single interesting thing. Believe me, I tried. This wasn’t merely the textbook caution of an ambitious politician, here was that rare and disconcerting thing, a human being who had nothing to say about life, and reacted to questions about everyday experience with polite bafflement. I should have known something was seriously amiss when Mrs May’s advisers, Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill, hovered during our meeting. They were more like anxious parents at a school play, fretting their child would forget her lines.
To be fair to Mrs May, she has a remarkable sense of duty, informed by her Christian faith, and a fantastic work ethic. But modern politics isn’t fair. The geographer from St Hugh’s College, Oxford, who said that running through fields of wheat was the naughtiest thing she did as a child, could never meet the 21st-century requirement to be “relatable”. One senior Conservative woman told me: “To be perfectly honest, I dread the occasions when I’m alone with her. She’s an empty vessel. It’s not her fault, she’s not a bad person, it’s just there’s nothing there.”
Ignore the protestations of loyalty from her government colleagues, Theresa May is fatally wounded. Trust in her has haemorrhaged; seeking Angela Merkel’s approval for her Brexit plan before sharing it with Cabinet colleagues was, for many, final proof of her treachery.
A few months ago, I had a revealing conversation with a Cabinet minister. “Everyone knows we can’t go into another election with Theresa as our leader,” he said.
Does Mrs May know that?
“Er, no. But Philip [May] is fully aware. And he will break the news to her when the time comes.”
Is Mr May about to have the chat with his wife? Maybe the Conservative Party will let her complete Brexit before ruthlessly despatching her in March, or maybe the polls will turn so viciously against May’s “agreement” that she has to go sooner. The argument that jettisoning her might help Corbyn and Momentum is what Boris would call an inverted pyramid of piffle. Keeping Mrs May at the helm would lead to certain electoral disaster.
At Chequers, the Prime Minister unpleasantly warned her ministers that, if they opposed her version of Brexit, they would be replaced by more talented colleagues and soon be forgotten. Momentarily, she tasted victory, and it must have been sweet.
But it is she who will be replaced by a more talented colleague; Mrs May, even if she isn’t forgotten, will never be forgiven by Tory activists. Time for our Accidental Prime Minister to slip on her kitten heels and walk.