Please can the bullying of Theresa May stop?

We all remember it from school, whether as perpetrator, or assistant of perpetrator, or victim: the moment when everyone turns against another pupil and it becomes legitimate to be vile to her. When she is ‘down’, it becomes more and more enjoyable to torture her and to find endless new aspects of her to be woundingly vicious about, every hour of every day. It has been like this for Theresa May in the last week. She’s the outcast in the playground, knowing that if she so much as opens her mouth to say something, she’ll receive a torrent of withering sarcasm.

Please can it stop? It leaves a nasty taste in the mouth, whatever one’s politics. It’s actually worse than school bullying, because at least that kind is nakedly nasty, so you know where you are with it. The bullying of Mrs May we’ve seen in the wake of the Grenfell Tower fire is a different, more subtly nasty kind: it’s the sanctimonious bullying of someone who is already ‘down’.