Theresa may

Last night’s Tory leadership debate was an illustration of where the wider party has ended up: fractious, confused, and without a clear plan for what to do next. Today’s Prime Minister’s Questions showed the damage that these blue-on-blue attacks are doing to the Conservative party. A number of the candidates have criticised the policies of their own government particularly when it comes to spending. It was inevitable that this was going to get picked up by the Opposition as an attack line. Labour’s Paul Williams pointed out that Sajid Javid had pledged to reverse Theresa May’s police cuts, while other MPs either made bids for the spending review or warned

Boris Johnson seems the opposite of Theresa May. The worst thing she ever did was run through a wheat field. The worst thing he ever did remains open to debate. But dark suspicious prompted Charles Moore, whom older readers will remember as a defender of family values, to ask: ‘Does it matter if our future prime minister is considered by some to be a sex maniac?’ (Not if it’s a sex maniac Moore supports, apparently.) May is withdrawn. Johnson is outgoing. May will tell you how many children she has. Johnson won’t. May is viewed by the right as the head of a Remainer conspiracy. Johnson resigned rather than serve in

In less than a month, Theresa May’s premiership will be history. If she is remembered at all, it will mainly be for Brexit. She took on a near-impossible task, made it harder (her misjudged ‘red lines’ from autumn 2016 will always haunt her), and finally failed at it. That had many consequences, not least the neglect of domestic policy. The burning injustices she so memorably listed on the Downing Street step are still blazing away. Poor social mobility, health inequality, racial bias in the justice system, a dysfunctional housing market and poor provision for mental health problems – all remain unresolved. It is therefore understandable that Theresa May wants to

There’s a joke going around the various warring tribes in the Tory leadership contest. They might not win this time, they tell each other, but not to worry: ‘We’ll all meet again in November.’ The point is that whoever succeeds Theresa May is doomed: the 31 October deadline will pass not with Britain leaving the European Union but with a political crisis and a general election that will be won by Jeremy Corbyn. After that, the Tories will in a few months go through the whole process again — this time to pick a leader of the opposition. ‘We’re using this leadership campaign as a test run for when the

A fair few MPs felt there was no reason to come to today’s Prime Minister’s Questions, given the real action is in the Conservative leadership contest. There were spaces behind Theresa May as she took questions from Jeremy Corbyn. The Labour leader clearly hadn’t put much effort into preparing for the session, either, offering a bizarre hotchpotch of questions ranging from no-deal Brexit to the government’s record on renewables. Those Tories who had turned up weren’t interested in asking May tricky questions: what was the point, when she has just weeks left as Prime Minister? Instead, they wanted to praise what existed of her record, with Peter Bone praising her

Tears for fears Theresa May welled up while announcing her resignation in Downing Street. How often do leaders cry? — Lady Thatcher was seen to have tears in her eyes while being driven away from Downing Street for the last time. — Tony Blair nearly broke down in public, but not while in office — while responding to the publication of the Chilcot Report in 2016. — Several US presidents have been witnessed crying — and at a time when it was rare for men to be seen showing emotion in public. Dwight Eisenhower had to cover his face with a napkin to hide his tears in 1952, when recalling

Parliament is in recess at the moment, though the difference between a House of Commons Chamber that is sitting and one that isn’t is scarcely noticeable at present, given how few votes MPs are being required to attend. There is a similarly thin distinction between a government led by Theresa May as she insists she’s not going anywhere, and one led by the Theresa May who, last week, finally conceded that she was going. Not much is happening, as per usual. In fact, there will be even less happening as a result of May’s resignation announcement. Today at the Number 10 lobby briefing, the Prime Minister’s official spokesman was asked

Theresa May will inevitably be remembered for the Brexit farce, but it may not turn out to be as harmful as some of her other legacies. In her resignation speech she claimed to have led ‘a decent, moderate and patriotic Conservative government on the common ground of British politics’. She said that our country was not ‘just a family of four nations, but a union of people’. We stand together, she said, ‘regardless of ‘our background, the colour of our skin, or who we love’. As prime minister she believed she had fought ‘the burning injustices that still scar our society’ by introducing the race disparity audit and gender pay

Pretty much all the bad things that people are saying today about Theresa May are true. She’s bad at politics, bad at communicating, bad at dealing with colleagues. She created the conditions that made her job as prime minister handling Brexit almost impossible. Her ‘red lines’ in the autumn of 2016 gave Britain almost no room for manoeuvre and made the sort of cross-party consensus approach to Brexit that is the logical response to a 52:48 referendum result practically impossible. Her 2017 general election cost her the Commons majority that might just have made that hardline approach viable. Her response was quintessentially Theresa May: she compromised on policy but not

This week’s European election was always going to be pointless, at least from a British perspective. It is possible that the elected candidates will never even take up their seats. In one important sense, however, the election campaign has been useful: as a reminder of where public opinion stands on Brexit. A few weeks ago, many believed that Change UK, the party founded by Labour and Conservative dissidents spoiling for a revocation of Article 50, would capture the public mood. Instead, another new political party would appear to have triumphed — a party set up with the sole purpose of expressing anger at the failure of Parliament to effect Britain’s