What people say about Theresa May

Theresa May’s departure was probably inevitable from the moment she lost her gamble to establish a Conservative majority big enough to get her withdrawal agreement through the House of Commons.

But she made one crucial misjudgement after the general election. In December 2017, she accepted the EU’s demand that the terms of the UK’s departure include a commitment that nothing would change on the Irish border. 

Professor Helen Thompson in Unherd


What comes next, for the Tories and Britain and Brexit, will prove that Theresa May’s failures, like her premiership, were modest and second-tier. History will say relatively little about her tactical record, focussing instead on acts of grand strategic failure and their authors.

James Kirkup today in his Spectator blog.


I wanted to believe Theresa May when she first said Brexit means Brexit, but I remember thinking that if she really thought that, wouldn’t she then have to sack all those Remainers in the civil service who helped push Cameron and George Osborne into their Project Fear suicide mission? Would she hell. Imagine if she had passed her deal. It would ultimately have been formalised in the small hours in the penumbras of some or other EU summit. There would be lots more of the European Court of Justice, a firming up of the common rule book, our fishing rights would be retained by the Spanish and the Scandinavians.
We would go on paying money indefinitely. Ministers Dominic Raab and Michael Gove would have turned up on the Today programme to tell us those were never really red lines — they were pinkish and, let’s face it, slightly wonky — and that the alternative was to crash out, and that would have played into the hands of Jeremy Corbyn. May’s deluded circle would have convinced themselves that they have averted catastrophe, when in reality the Tory party would be out of power for 20 years.

Stephen Robinson today in his Spectator blog.


By any objective measure, she will go down in history as the worst Prime Minister of all time. What is her legacy? She holds a number of records. She had the largest Commons defeat ever on a government motion (230 votes). She induced the largest swing against her party ever during a General Election campaign (more than 10 per cent). She led the first government ever to be held in contempt by Parliament. She has led her party to what will surely be its lowest ever vote share in the 2019 European Elections.

More judgementally, she will surely be regarded as having achieved not one positive thing in her period in office. She agreed to the worst Treaty any government has agreed outside defeat in war, including the formal segmentation of the country. She repeatedly broke her public promises — surely no other Prime Minister (even Tory Blair) will be seen by history as such a relentless and repeated liar. Her sustained breaches of faith have destroyed trust in the political system. She has facilitated the rise of a quasi-Marxist to the near-certainty of become Prime Minister, and has quite possibly destroyed the world’s oldest political party. No British Prime Minister has office with a legacy even close to as bad as this since the 18th century (when sustained incompetence lost the American colonies).

Andrew Lilico in the Telegraph


Where, then, did it all go so terribly wrong? It was as soon as she stepped through the door of Number Ten Downing Street. Instead of turning round and telling people, particularly in her own party, the truth – namely that the referendum was a close run thing, that people had voted Leave for a myriad of different reasons, that the Irish border was bound to prove problematic, and that, more generally, the EU-27 weren’t going to allow the UK to have its cake and eat it – she decided to present herself as Brexitier-than-thou.

Professor Tim Bale in Unherd

Alexander Nekrassov‏ @StirringTrouble
Theresa May leaves behind a nation divided as never before along racial, religious and national lines with relations between men and women damaged by militant #feminism and young antagonised against the old and children against parents. Her cabinet bears the blame for it as well



Alexander Nekrassov‏ @StirringTrouble
Another disgraceful legacy Theresa May leaves behind is politicising the police and intelligence services who are used to suppress political dissent. May championed the so-called hate crimes that are used to hound people who object to the far-left agendas imposed on the country.