How the ‘new Iron Lady’ crumbled in the face of election disaster and Brexit failure

Theresa May was branded a ‘strong and stable’ leader only to be exposed as indecisive and intransigent, writes Camilla Tominey

It started with an uncompromising speech and ended with a speech calling for compromise. No one could have predicted Theresa May’s spectacular fall from grace when she delivered her landmark Lancaster House speech in January 2017. Six months into her term in office and before her disastrous decision to call a snap general election, the Prime Minister appeared at the top of her game after winning the leadership with the simple pitch: “I’m Theresa May and I think I’m the best person to lead this country.”

Dressed in her lucky Black Watch tartan Vivienne Westwood suit, she vowed that Britain would not be “stuck forever in some kind of permanent political purgatory”.

Yet despite her noble aim of solving some of the “burning injustices” faced by the “just-about-managings”, the referendum result placed Mrs May and her domestic policies in political limbo, while exposing her weaknesses as an indecisive leader seemingly unable to read the mood both inside and outside her party.

While the last 72 hours of Mrs May’s leadership saw her finally boxed into a corner, arguably she had been on the ropes since 2017 when, on returning from an Easter walking holiday in Snowdonia with her husband Philip, she declared a general election would be held on June 8.

Explaining the decision, Mrs May said: “The country is coming together but Westminster is not.”

How ironic that statement would later prove to be when, despite insisting she was the “strong and stable” leader needed to deliver Brexit, she ended up being deprived of her slim majority in the Commons and left dependent on a confidence-andsupply arrangement with the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) in return for a £1billion incentive. The one-week-too-long campaign – in which she appeared stilted and lacking spontaneity in the face of Corbynmania – saw her shed a 20-point lead in the polls and lose 13 MPS.

Another quote that would come back to haunt her emerged during a testy press conference, when a visibly frustrated Mrs May insisted “nothing has changed” following an about-turn on the Tories’ social care policy – pinpointed as the nail in the coffin of the party’s 2017 manifesto.

From that point on, Mrs May was not only faced with a day-to-day battle to force her agenda through amid the fragile unity of her Government, but left to do it without Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill, her joint chiefs of staff who became the fall guys for what was dubbed one of the worst campaigns in recent memory.

And having already triggered Article 50, there was then the not inconsiderable matter of negotiating Britain’s “orderly” exit from the EU by March 29 2019.

During her first party conference speech as leader, in October 2016, Mrs May had shocked many by setting out “red lines” for EU withdrawal that put Britain on track for a hard Brexit.

Hailed by some as a “new Iron Lady”, the outspoken vicar’s daughter with a reputation for making controversial speeches dismissed her critics as people who saw themselves as “citizens of the world” but were in fact “citizens of nowhere”. The comment rankled with some, appearing just as clumsy as the “nasty party” jibe she made when Tory chairman in 2002, or when, as home secretary in 2015, she accused the Police Federation of “crying wolf ” over funding cuts.

Eyebrows had already been raised by her rushing to be the first leader to meet Donald Trump at the White House following his inauguration as US president in 2017.

Although determined to take the UK into a new global role, footage of Mrs May holding Mr Trump’s hand exposed her to ridicule and raised questions about her judgment.

But if people thought her 2016 conference speech was controversial, it was nothing compared with her keynote address the following year in Manchester, when she struggled to get her words out as a cold and dry cough robbed her of her voice.

If that was not bad enough, she then fell victim to Simon Brodkin, a television prankster who handed her a P45 “from Boris” on the conference stage, before, as she struggled on, several letters fell from a slogan on the backdrop, revealing a Fawlty Towersstyle crumbling set. There were even accusations that her speech writers had stolen a key line from The West Wing, the US television series.

When it came to speeches, Mrs May did not fare particularly well after Lancaster House. Her Florence speech, a week before that ill-fated party conference, was gazumped by Boris Johnson, then foreign secretary, laying out his own post-brexit vision for Britain in The Daily Telegraph. At 5,357 words, Mrs May’s optimistic

oration was welcomed by Michel Barnier, the EU’S chief Brexit negotiator, as “a step forward”, but lacked the “precise negotiating position” Brussels desperately craved.

Brexiteers were also growing worried – had Mrs May softened her stance following the departure of Mr Timothy, a staunch Leaver, who was replaced as chief of staff by Gavin Barwell, the arch-remainer?

The appointment of Olly Robbins, the Europhile civil servant, as Mrs May’s Europe adviser also fuelled fears that she was caving into the EU, coming just four days before her address in Italy.

The worst fears of Leavers were confirmed in December 2017 when a leaked draft paper suggested that the Prime Minister planned to have “continued regulatory alignment” between the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland; and to make matters worse, she hadn’t bothered to tell

In her first party conference as leader, Mrs May shocked many by setting out red lines for withdrawal that put Britain on track for a hard Brexit

Arlene Foster, the DUP leader. Jacob Rees-mogg summed up the mood among his fellow Brexiteers when he asked Mrs May during Prime Minister’s Questions whether she should “apply a new coat of paint to her red lines because I fear they were beginning to look a little bit pink”.

A night flight to Brussels on Dec 8 to finalise her Withdrawal Agreement with Jean-claude Juncker, President of the EU Commission, represented progress after months of stalemate. But it was still widely perceived as a climbdown – and, crucially, was agreed without Cabinet approval. By the time it had been signed and sealed, it was too late for Brexiteer ministers to point out the obvious pitfalls in the introduction of controversial backstop customs arrangements for Northern Ireland that would sow the seeds for months of future pain.

A speech at the Mansion House in March 2018, marking a year until Brexit Day by calling for a “customs partnership” with the EU, did little to allay concerns about a capitulation.

But it was Mrs May’s attempt to unify her Cabinet behind her “cherry picking” deal at Chequers, in July 2018, that resulted in the wheels well and truly coming off her Brexit policy. A reversal of the approach she set out at Lancaster House, it was interpreted by many as conceding that the UK would become a rule-taker for goods, destroying any prospect of Brexit resulting in regulatory freedom and new free-trade agreements.

Mr Johnson resigned from the Foreign Office. David Davis, the Brexit secretary who blamed No10 for allowing Mr Robbins to sideline him during the negotiations with the European Union, also quit.

The following week, Chequers would once again play host to a historic moment – a working visit from Mr Trump. But what was supposed to

Then Jacob Rees-mogg summed up the Brexiteer mood when he asked if she needed new paint for red lines which were ‘beginning to look a little bit pink’

be a diplomatic charm offensive for Mrs May turned to disaster when the US president described the Government as in “turmoil”, before declaring that Mr Johnson “has what it takes” to be PM.

Mrs May’s prospects as an international stateswoman did not improve at the EU summit in Salzburg in September 2018, when she was ambushed by EU leaders unexpectedly declaring that her Chequers proposals would not work.

Thrown on to the defensive just a week before the Conservative Party conference, a clearly nervous and angry Mrs May accused EU leaders of engaging in “negotiating tactics” designed to throw her off course.

Yet the rejection by Donald Tusk, the President of the European Council, and France’s President Emmanuel Macron, was also damaging for her political prospects at home, prompting Tory Leavers to demand the plan be

abandoned after Mrs May was set an October deadline to find a solution to the Irish border issue.

At the party conference in October, Mrs May took to the stage to the tune of Abba’s Dancing Queen, a nod to her cringe-worthy attempt at tribal dancing during a summer visit to South Africa. But by the following month, no one was laughing after Dominic Raab handed in his resignation as Brexit Secretary – along with other Leave-backing ministers including Esther Mcvey – in protest at the final deal agreed with leaders of the other 27 EU states in Brussels.

Having been described as a “bloody difficult woman” by Ken Clarke, it seemed Mrs May had been able to enact little influence over the increasingly intransigent EU to secure the assurances her critics had demanded.

Naturally, the happiness of Eurocrats appeared inversely proportionate to that of Tory MPS on both sides of the Brexit divide.

There was even more dissatisfaction on both sides of the House of Commons when the Government refused to publish the legal advice it had received on Brexit, leading to the it being held in contempt of Parliament.

Now in open warfare with the DUP and many of her backbenchers, who insisted that the Withdrawal Agreement would leave the UK in a state of vassalage, the slow drip-feed of letters of no confidence in the Prime Minister turned into a flood with the announcement on Dec 10 that Mrs May was delaying a meaningful vote on the deal for fear it would be lost by too great a margin.

Already accused of constantly kicking the Brexit can down the road, it proved to be the final straw for Tory MPS, who only a month earlier had resisted an attempted coup by Mr Rees-mogg and fellow members of his European Research Group of Tory Eurosceptics.

The following day, Sir Graham Brady, the chairman of the 1922 committee of backbench Tory MPS, announced the threshold of 48 letters had been reached to trigger a vote of no confidence.

Although she survived the secret ballot the next day, it was only after Mrs May had conceded she would not lead the party into the next general election. There were audible gasps when the unexpectedly close result – 200 votes to 117 – was read out, a severe blow to the Prime Minister’s authority.

By last Christmas, Mrs May’s credibility had been shot to pieces. She vowed to go into the recess having “listened to what MPS had said”, but although her government survived a confidence vote tabled by Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, the New Year did little to ring in the changes, with the EU refusing to reopen a Withdrawal Agreement that had only succeeded in uniting Westminster in condemnation.

Indeed, EU leaders had been only too happy to twist the knife, with Mr Juncker accusing Mrs May of being “nebulous” during an EU Summit in Brussels on Dec 14, prompting the Prime Minister to confront him in an awkward on-camera moment.

So, it came as no shock to anyone outside of No10 when Mrs May suffered the biggest parliamentary defeat of any British prime minister in the modern era when MPS rejected her Brexit deal by a resounding majority of 230 on Jan 15. Having insisted that “no deal was better than a bad deal”, Mrs May doubled down on rebel MPS – accusing them of risking Brexit altogether if they failed to vote for her deal the second time around in March.

Although it fared a little better, defeated by 149 votes, there was more unhappiness in the ranks when the impasse forced Mrs May to go grovelling to the EU for a Brexit extension on March 20 – just nine days before Britain had been due to leave the bloc.

“The delay is a matter of great personal regret,” Mrs May told MPS.

A third vote on the original Brexit date of March 29 was prefaced by yet another promise from Mrs May to quit if the deal passed, but even that was not enough to secure victory and the Government was again defeated, this time by 58 votes. Coming after a series of indicative votes failed to find a consensus in Parliament, but with Remainer plots to stop Brexit altogether gaining momentum, some key Brexiteers, including Mr Reesmogg, Mr Johnson, Mr Raab and Mr Davis, ended up voting for the deal out of pure desperation.

April saw Mrs May forced to go cap in hand to Brussels to request an extension to Article 50. She had hoped for a short delay to avoid the UK having to go through with the European Parliament elections, but the EU had other ideas, granting an extension until Oct 31.

The move sparked a grassroots Tory mutiny and prompted the resurgence of Nigel Farage after the former Ukip leader launched his Brexit Party to gobble up disgruntled Conservative Leave votes.

With Mrs May facing mounting calls to immediately set out the timetable for her departure, Sir Graham Brady threw the beleaguered leader a lifeline by allowing her extra time to strike a deal with Labour and hold another vote before setting out a schedule.

However, conspiring for a compromise with Mr Corbyn only served to further alienate Tory MPS and voters, not least after both parties received a drubbing in the local elections on May 2, with the Tories losing more than 1,300 seats in their biggest defeat since John Major.

After six weeks of stalemate, the talks with Labour finally collapsed on May 17. Which brings us to the final, fatal blow for Mrs May: Tuesday’s last-ditch plea for compromise.

With a fourth vote pencilled in for the first week in June, the 62-year-old career politician appeared so hell-bent on pushing through her unpopular plan, she told MPS she would be willing to countenance a customs union and even a second referendum to deliver Brexit as part of a political legacy now tarnished beyond repair.

But despite pointing out that she had “offered to give up the job I love earlier than I would like” to ensure Britain left the EU with a deal, her 10-point “new” Brexit plan was pronounced dead on arrival.

Mrs May was left to face down hostile MPS in the Commons on Wednesday as a flurry of noconfidence letters were publicly handed over to Sir Graham – and Cabinet ministers lined up to say they could not support the passage of the Withdrawal Agreement Bill (Wab).

Having appeared to have crossed the Rubicon, lobby journalists were prepared for Mrs May to announce her resignation on Wednesday night, but instead it was Andrea Leadsom, the Leader of the Commons, who fell on her sword, urging the Prime Minister to “make the right decisions in the interests of the country, this Government and our party”, as she became the 36th minister to quit during Mrs May’s tenure.

Meetings with a string of Cabinet ministers, including David Mundell, the Scottish Secretary; Jeremy Hunt, the Foreign Secretary, and Sajid Javid, the Home Secretary, were cancelled at the last minute as the Prime Minister was accused of bunkering down in Downing Street. “The sofa is up against the door, she’s not leaving,” said Iain Duncan Smith, the former Conservative leader, amid comparisons to the 2004 film Downfall, about Hitler’s final hours.

In fact, The Daily Telegraph has learnt that, far from hiding herself away, Mrs May had already decided she was going to announce her resignation by the time she left No10 for a scheduled meeting with the Queen at 6.30pm on Wednesday.

Although we will never know what the two women discussed, it is thought Mrs May informed the Queen of her plans to step down on June 7, following the state visit of Mr Trump and the commemorations to mark the 75th anniversary of D-day.

An insider revealed she spent her last 48 hours before announcing her departure “gathering her thoughts” and “working out what she was going to say”, rather than trying to delay the inevitable. By the time Mrs May left to vote in the European elections on Thursday, she had agreed to postpone proposals to publish the Bill, having fully accepted that she would not be around to see it through.

Richard Kellaway, her constituency chairman, saw Mrs May and her husband, Philip, in the village of Bray on Thursday afternoon, where they were canvassing for the elections.

“She decided to come out and walk the streets, and she was her usual healthy self, leaping from house to house, talking to people,” he said.

“I would say a bit circumspect, to be honest, but you can understand that.”

In an echo of the moment she became PM in 2016, Mrs May took to the steps of Downing Street yesterday to list the ways she wished to be remembered as she bade a tearful farewell to her 1,045 days so far in office. But in reality, her defining legacy will undoubtedly be Brexit, or rather her failure to deliver it.

Having been described as a ‘bloody difficult woman’ by Ken Clarke, it seemed Mrs May had enacted little influence over the intransigent EU leaders

EU leaders had been only too happy to twist the knife, with Mr Juncker accusing Mrs May of being ‘nebulous’ at a Brussels summit