Theresa May stepped down officially as Conservative Party leader today but will carry on as a caretaker PM and party leader until a sucessor is selected.
So what is her legacy ?
She was elected to lead the country out of the EU but failed miserably thanks to her party being completely at odds with her EU final ‘deal’. So she failed didn’t she ? But look at the economy which is in very good order with record numbers in employment apparently, so she has succeeded hasn’t she ? Was she all bad or can we take positives from her years as PM ?
I don’t think many will criticise her committment to getting a Brexit deal however unpopular it has proved to be. So would another elected PM and Conservative leader have fared any better ? For example, imagine if Boris had been elected instead of TM then would he have been stupid enough to call a General Election ? Would Boris have managed to get a Brexit deal through Parliament ?
She will go down as one of the worst PM’s ever for many reasons, the only thing in her defence is that Brexit was always going to be nigh on impossible to deliver given that the referendum result was so close.
I have nothing but sympathy for her. She took on an impossible task against impossible odds.
She made the mistake, early on, of calling a General Election - maybe she hoped to lose it and come back after another Government’s failure, who knows.
But, at least, she didn’t take our armed forces into conflict in support of the USA. That’s got to be a credit for her.
No sympathy. She was a bad Home Secretary and a worse PM. I think her main fault was her refusal to engage with people. Even after Grenfell she only met a selected few.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
I think that sums her up.
She made a number of stupid mistakes as Home Secretary - remember the van driving around London encouraging illegals to go home with a financial incentive ? She had 1 taker. She invoked Article 50 without a clear stratagy on how to leave with a deal. She held an unnecessary GE when she already had a majority and only succeeded in encouraging JC,she persisted with her WA after it had been turned down 3 times and would have presented it to Parliament again if she hadn’t been forced out. She was dedicated to the Conservative party first and foremost without regard to the good of the country and tried to be all things to all sides of the party and only succeeded in being dumped on. She ignored the implicit meaning behind the anti-Brexit demo and the 6M signatories of the petition to hold another referendum. She also ignored Nicola Sturgeon and the likely eventual departure of Scotland from the Union - a sop here would have been a good idea. All in all, she was a dismal failure as a PM and didn’t even have the balls to tell the country from the beginning that Brexit was a hideous mistake and the vote was too flawed to be regarded as anything but an opinion poll.
And she absolutely did not understand pragmatism, being totally convinced she was right and everyone else was wrong. Not too unlike Trump, actually.
At the risk of being inundated with cries of “nobody could have made a worse job of it” can anyone give an example of a present-day politician who could have successfully negotiated an acceptable Brexit?
It’s my impression that politics is not an occupation where the thin-skinned and snow-flake-y succeed in climbing the greasy pole to the top. And history shows that few achieve the top job and leave covered in glory.
Even Churchill looked a broken man in his come-back years. He should have retired at the height of his popularity, in the late 1940s, not that he was very popular then.
She can look forward to a peerage, a jolly fine retirement on the burgundy benches, and no doubt her old man will get a knighthood for services rendered to the establishment.
Acceptable to parliament or her party? If May had drawn a negotiating team from across the political divide and let them get on with it she would have stood half a chance of getting an agreement through.
Acceptable to everybody would be ideal, of course. Acceptable to Parliament would be the fall-back position (as the MP’s are elected to represent the people, something they seem to be incapable of doing).
Acceptable to those who voted to leave would be third choice.
But, with the benefit of hindsight, we can all see (and most people could have foreseen) that no such agreement would be possible.
“as the MP’s are elected to represent the people…”
That’s the problem Ian, for those MPs (and there are many) who are firm ‘Remainers’ but who represent a constituency that voted to ‘Leave’ what do they do ? Do they follow their conscience or respect the will of their voters ?