MAY TWISTS THE STILETTO
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW
WITH a portrait of Churchill staring down at her from the wall of her Commons office, Theresa May does not have to look far for inspiration as she faces her own day of destiny. General Election day – June 8 – falls just 48 hours after the 73rd anniversary of D-Day in the Second World War.
The Prime Minister called the Election to rally the nation behind her before she embarks on her own epic European crusade.
Compared to the mammoth task ahead of her during Brexit negotiations, when she will have to grapple with the likes of Merkel and Juncker, seeing off clueless Corbyn looks like swatting a fly.
Vicar’s daughter Mrs May is not the type to throw around insults like ‘mugwump’. She leaves that to Boris.
But behind the prim Home Counties exterior is an ironclad political streetfighter, albeit with blue velvet bows on her shoes. And she does not pull her punches as she vows to crush Corbyn.
Interviewed by The Mail on Sunday on Wednesday, she is invited to sum him up in three words. She offers four: ‘Weak, unstable, nonsensical and floundering.’
In the course of a wide-ranging conversation, she:
Says she prays regularly for ‘spiritual connection and uplift’ – and not just in church on Sunday.
Admits she had grown much less shy since becoming PM: ‘We all change and develop.’
Is cool about Margaret Thatcher, saying: ‘I barely knew her.’
Reveals she does her Red Box Cabinet papers in the No10 flat in the evening, ‘listening to Classic FM radio and chatting’ to husband Philip.
The Prime Minister also talks candidly about her type 1 diabetes condition, diagnosed in 2012, saying she is adamant it will not hamper her in late-night Brexit talks with EU leaders, vowing she will inject herself with insulin at the table without leaving the room.
Evidence of the little-seen lighter side of the ‘strait-laced’ Prime Minister, who loves to wear leopardprint heels, is sitting next to her on the sofa in her Commons office where we talk, a pink cushion with the motto: ‘I can deal with anything if I have the right pair of shoes.’
She even indulges in a rare selfdeprecating quip about her ‘strong and stable’ campaign mantra, saying of her recent trip to Snowdon with her husband, when she decided to call the Election: ‘It’s important, when walking up mountains, always to feel strong and stable!’
We interview Mrs May on the day a new poll shows she is the most popular modern-day PM, beating Thatcher and Blair at their peak.
She has one advantage over them, in the shape of Left-winger Corbyn, arguably the least popular Labour leader of all time.
When she says she is ‘strong and stable’, what she is really saying is: ‘I am strong and stable, Corbyn is weak and unstable.’ Isn’t she? ‘Yes, it’s about who’s going to be Prime Minister,’ she says unapologetically.
‘Labour has launched seven Brexit plans. They say conflicting things in the same sentence, let alone an hour or a day or a week afterwards. Jeremy Corbyn can’t even persuade 172 of his MPs to have confidence in him.’ She barely takes breath before adding that he is ‘weak and unstable’. ‘Some of the things that come from him… are nonsensical. He’s floundering.’
Such as? ‘Defence.’ Corbyn says he would not press the nuclear button. Would she?
‘Yes.’ Trump could not have answered more quickly.
Then why won’t she go on TV and debate with ‘weak and unstable’ Corbyn?
‘There’ll be no lack of me being on television, I can tell you!’
Mrs May says she called the Election because Labour and the Lib Dems threatened to sabotage Brexit. Others say she is cynically seizing the chance to bury Labour and cram the Commons with hundreds of Tory MPs who will obey every word of ‘St Theresa’.
Since she already has a majority, albeit a slim one, she will look a proper Charlie if she doesn’t win handsomely.
She won’t rise to the bait. ‘I never predict Election results.’
Listening to previous bold declarations that she will not shrink from leaving the EU with no deal at all if she doesn’t get what she wants, it is easy to forget she voted Remain last June. She boasts her deliberately lukewarm pro-Remain speech in which she casually added ‘the sky won’t fall in if we leave’ – to the fury of David Cameron – has been proved right by the strength of the economy. Now she is determined to unite Remainers and Leavers.
‘I want to take us beyond this idea of “did somebody vote Remain or Leave?” It’s not about “hard Brexit” and “soft Brexit”. They’re not terms I use. The decision has been taken. Let’s just get on with it.’
She agrees it is ‘really important’ to reach out to the 48 per cent who voted to stay in the EU, adding: ‘What matters is that we come together and change this country for the future.’
Asked three times if she will carry out her threat to quit the EU empty-handed if necessary, she sidesteps it, saying she hopes to achieve a ‘great deal’.
If, as seems certain, she wins on June 8, the Brexit talks will soon begin in earnest. The nitty-gritty will be handled by her Brexit Ministers, but Mrs May will have to take charge when it comes to the crunch.
Will she be hampered by her ‘health problem’, her type 1 diabetes which requires her to inject herself with insulin four times a day, if negotiations over dinner in Brussels go into the early hours?
She takes strong exception to being accused of having a ‘health
‘Would I press the nuclear button? Yes’
problem’. ‘I’m going to pull you up on describing type 1 diabetes as a health problem,’ she says indignantly. ‘People who have it can do whatever they like!’
But what if the others ganged up on her while she was out of the room injecting?
She explains why they wouldn’t get the chance: ‘I inject when I’m eating.’ It doesn’t involve a needle, but a medical ‘pen’ which allows her to do it discreetly at the table.
‘What is important is that, when you sit round that table, you know what you want and have the strength and determination to make your point and make it clearly.’
Is it possible that her diabetes, and the frank way she has discussed it, has added a shade of vulnerability to her valiance? ‘I can’t comment on how others see me,’ she replies. ‘My approach to anything, whatever the circumstances, is: you roll up your sleeves and do it.
‘Yes, type 1 diabetes brings a change in one’s life – I have to inject, test my blood sugar and so forth – but it doesn’t mean there are things I can’t do. You just build that into your life.
‘It’s hugely important that young people with type 1 diabetes know it won’t be a barrier to them in their lives.’
Even her close friends have been taken aback by the way she has been galvanised since entering No10. In Prime Minister’s Questions just before our interview, she brazenly urges people to ‘vote for me’, pointing to her chest like a prize fighter.
The meek Mrs May of a year or so ago would have blushed. She laughs in acknowledgment and reflects: ‘You know, we all change through our lives. We all develop as we’re doing different jobs.’
What is it in her that strikes a chord with dukes and dustmen alike? ‘I hope people feel with me that what they see is what they get.’
When Mrs May joined the Tory
Party, aspiring women MPs could expect to be asked how they would find time to iron their husband’s shirts if they were busy at the Commons.
When she was fighting to break through the Tory glass ceiling, she didn’t whinge. ‘If I failed in a selection interview, I didn’t come out thinking, “I failed because I was a woman.” I thought, “Which questions didn’t I answer very well? What do I need to mug up on better?”’
She proclaims her Christian faith without embarrassment and recalls praying on her knees in church alone alongside her clergyman father Hubert Brasier and mother, Zaidee.
‘Yes, I’m a practising Christian. Going to church is an important part of my life. It’s what I call spiritual connection and uplift.’
Does she pray at night at No10 before going to bed? ‘I do pray. I pray in a variety of ways.’
It’s as far as she will go. ‘This is getting into the personal,’ she says, retreating into her shell. But she leaves no doubt about her commitment: ‘To me, prayer isn’t something that you just do at particular times.’
She is equally committed to her Conservative faith: ‘Labour wants to bring people down to a lowest common denominator. We want to let people aspire to a better future.’
It sounds Thatcherite. Portraits of famous Tories such as Churchill, Pitt, Peel and Disraeli adorn her office. There are none of Thatcher. Some say she was miffed to be beaten by her in her ambition to be the first woman PM.
‘I barely met her,’ says Mrs May, who merely describes Mrs T as ‘unique’. Mrs May announced her arrival as a major political figure with her famous – some Tory traditionalists would say notorious – speech in 2002 saying the Conservatives were seen as ‘the Nasty Party’.
In 1970, when Theresa was a Tory supporting grammar school girl, Thatcher was Education Secretary and scrapped free milk in primary schools, earning her the ‘nasty’ tag, ‘Milk Snatcher Thatcher’. If Mrs Thatcher had been asked what made her angry in politics, she would have given a very different reply to Mrs May. ‘Lots of things have made me feel “That’s wrong” – domestic violence, modern slavery, child sexual abuse.’
She was outraged by the Rotherham child sexual grooming scandal involving young, working class, white girls.
‘There was an attitude that said, “These are girls from that sort of background – this is the sort of thing that will happen to them. We’ll ignore it.” That makes me really angry.’
What made her want to be a politician before she was even a teenager? ‘Gosh, it’s difficult to remember that far. It wasn’t a snap, Damascene conversion where I suddenly thought, “Right, politics is it!” It just grew.’
Theresa May is still growing.