Posted by 
Westminster says farewell to Britain’s second female premier, who was brought down by Conservative Party civil wars over Europe.
When she came to office in 2016, Theresa May had everything going for her: a united party, a supportive electorate, and all the experience and strength of character to make a success of her role as Britain’s second female prime minister.
Instead, as she announces her departure from the U.K. parliament after 27 years at the forthcoming general election, May will overwhelmingly be remembered for just one thing: her abject failure to get Brexit done.
This was the mission she set herself upon entering No. 10 in the wake of the 2016 vote to leave the European Union, after being elected unanimously by her party’s members of parliament. It was also perhaps the one task she was temperamentally ill equipped to deliver.
May herself was largely unaligned in the great schism which had riven her Conservative Party since the war and continues to divide it today; she voted to Remain but came out as such only at the last minute. She had felt frustration with Brussels during her six years as home secretary, but on balance felt it would be economically reckless to leave.
That meant that she lacked any ideological ballast in the Brexit wars that followed, when the U.K. parliament became a chaotic mess of tension and recrimination. Angry MPs repeatedly voted down the deals she painstakingly negotiated with EU leaders, while apparently offering no alternative path through the quagmire. She proved spectacularly unable to resolve the impasse.
It was only when May was forced to stand aside for Boris Johnson that Brexit was indeed done.
A thorn in her successors’ sides
Unusually for an ex-prime minister, May stuck around the House of Commons for seven years after her tearful departure from No. 10, where she focused on pet projects including tackling modern slavery and, having developed type one diabetes in her 50s, care for the disease. She was also something of a thorn in the side of her successors, last year criticizing Rishi Sunak over his climate policies.
May received plaudits for the typically traditional and upstanding way she announced her plan to depart at the general election, which will take place this year — in the pages of her local newspaper in her constituency of Maidenhead.
Sunak was among those who paid tribute, saying that May “defines what it means to be a public servant.” Her predecessor David Cameron, who now serves as foreign secretary, added: “She has been the most dedicated of public servants. The House of Commons will miss her.”
Andrew Gimson, author of “Gimson’s Prime Ministers,” says of May: “At heart she was a very decent person who always did her best. Unfortunately, her best was not enough.”
At the outset of her premiership, May’s vista appeared promising. As she stood on the steps of Downing Street she promised to end the “burning injustices” she felt bedeviled Britain at the start of the new century. She portrayed herself as a smart, meritocratic grammar school girl, in contrast to the empty charm of her Eton-educated predecessor David Cameron.
She had chafed against Cameron during her six years serving him as home secretary, an unprecedented tenure in a role which, before and since, has been seen as a poisoned chalice.
Gimson said: “I admired her as home secretary, when she really stood up to the Americans over the extradition of Gary McKinnon, and really stood up for herself in Cabinet. To last that long in such a difficult department, with a bureaucracy that had been labeled ‘not fit for purpose’ was very impressive.”
Strong home secretary
At the Home Office, she was criticized for introducing a “hostile environment” for immigrants, a phrase she later said she regretted, but was admired for her staunch outlook in the face of several terrorist attacks.
While fellow MPs admired her strength, others found her rigid — Cabinet colleague Ken Clarke was caught on a hot mic describing her as a “bloody difficult woman,” and she struggled to make allegiances, a pattern which came back to haunt her in the Brexit years.
Gimson says: “One of the consequences of having been a very independent home secretary was that she wasn’t very good at forming close political relationships, except with her closest advisers. She was always a bit of a loner.”
May’s strength departed her when she made the fatal mistake of heeding the siren call of those in her party who wanted her to call a general election less than a year into her term in office, in a bid to shore up her majority. Instead, irritated at being dragged back to the polls by internal Tory politics and spooked by an 11th hour proposal floated by May’s adviser Nick Timothy of a root and branch reform of social care, electors denied her one.
That left May wounded and vulnerable, lacking the numbers to stave off even the tiniest rebellion; indeed, she could govern the minority parliament only with the support of Northern Ireland’s hard-line Democratic Union Party, adding an additional headache in her already fraught negotiations with Brussels.
The inability to form close relationships proved a problem in May’s interactions with European leaders, too, and matters became almost farcical when it came to dealing with her American counterpart. That Donald Trump was the president she was forced to deal with during her time in No. 10 meant she was denied the cosy relationship most British leaders enjoy with U.S. presidents.
Instead, she would be photographed with a rictus grin as this most upstanding of U.K. premiers struggled to communicate with the wildest American president in history.
Excrutiating
In one of the more excruciating political videos of all time, Trump held May by the hand as they walked to meet a phalanx of camera crews, to her clear mortification.
She laughed off the embarrassment as she did the many indignities that characterized her three years in office: the coughing fit that derailed her conference speech; the votes of confidence she lost; the repeated rejection of her best efforts to secure Brexit; and the snubs and jibes from EU leaders.
Harder to face, perhaps, was the reality that her ambition to do something with her time in office — to tackle those burning injustices — never came to fruition. The behemoth that was Brexit consumed all her hopes of achieving anything of substance.
As one of the unluckiest prime ministers ever to hold office, she leaves the Commons knowing that her reputation as a decent person may remain intact — but her legacy will forever be tainted by the Brexit wars.
Rosa Prince is author of the book “Theresa May: The Enigmatic Prime Minister”
