I am not robotic, May tells critics of her General Election campaign

The PM doesn’t think she’s a ‘glumbucket’. THERESA MAY has revealed her frustration at being branded “robotic” during June’s General Election campaign, when the Conservatives’ lost their overall Commons majority following a campaign widely branded lacklustre.

Appearing on BBC Radio’s Test Match Special, the Prime Minister said she would have liked to have met more voters during the election and insisted: “I get frustrated [that] people used the term ‘robotic’ about me during that campaign.

“I don’t think I’m in the least robotic. What I really enjoy is getting out there, talking to people, hearing from them, understanding what the issues are for them.”

Branded a “glumbucket” during the campaign, Mrs May was rarely seen meeting ordinary voters and came in for fierce criticism for not taking part in headto-head TV debates with her fellow party leaders.

Asked whether she felt personally hurt by the election result, Mrs May said: “It is difficult to go into an election thinking, working, hoping for a particular result and then getting a different result. As the leader of the party, of course you have to take it to a degree personally and you have to accept that responsibility. Any election campaign, particularly one that has gone like that, you have to look back and say ‘What should we have done? What did we do that we shouldn’t have done? What did we not do?’

“This was a campaign like no other I’ve ever had, because I’ve always enjoyed getting out there and knocking on doors and meeting people in the streets and, of course, as party leader and Prime Minister you tend to have a different sort of campaign. It’s more meeting groups of people and making a number of speeches.”

The PM said she was still driven by her agenda of helping people who were “just about managing” and improving areas like mental health.

“I’m not a quitter,” she declared. “There’s a job to be done and I and the Government are getting on and doing it.”

Mrs May sought to shake off comparisons with the UK’s only previous female premier, saying: “There was only ever one Margaret Thatcher.”

A keen cricket fan, the PM took home-made chocolate brownies for the Test Match Special team, saying she baked them to a Nigel Slater recipe.