Theresa May's Catastrophic Leadership Is Finally Over
Her legacy is entirely of her own making.
NOTE: In light of British PM Theresa May’s resignation today I’m holding off my piece about surviving the rat race of modern life. Britain is now dangerously close to marching off a cliff in the upcoming Brexit negotiations, with hardline ideologues set to take over the country and plunge it into economic oblivion. As a Brit, this concerns me greatly, so I’m covering it today.
Also, there’s still time to get your first month free on a Banter Membership — we’ve extended the offer for an extra day due to the large influx of new subscribers, so go ahead and try us out risk-free!:
by Ben Cohen
It is impossible not to feel a little sorry for Theresa May. Her emotional resignation speech from Downing Street today did much to humanize her after years of being called ‘The Maybot’. May was astonishingly resilient as the leader of Great Britain — a stubborn workhorse who simply refused to cave no matter how bad it got. And it got very, very bad.
May took over from David Cameron in the wake of the catastrophic Brexit referendum in 2016 that had torn the country apart, and she did her best to get a Brexit bill through Parliament that would be accepted by the EU. But try as she might, the deeply divided Parliament would not pass any of her proposals. She even attempted to ram through the same deal on three separate occasions, believing she could grind down the opposition into accepting it even though literally everyone agreed it was atrociously thought out and naively negotiated.
From the beginning of her time in office, May stumbled from one self inflicted catastrophe to another, handling the divisions in her party and the country with the finesse of a bull in a china shop. May called a general election in 2017 and performed so badly that it forced the Tories to go into a coalition with an extremist Northern Irish party (the DUP) to stay in power. May was by all accounts tone deaf, emotionally stunted, and impossible to negotiate with, leading the EU, Labour, and her own party to give up any hope of a workable departure deal. May’s lack of political talent was astonishing to behold — from her spectacularly bad speeches to her uncanny ability to offend the wrong people at the wrong time without fail, May never let an opportunity to destroy her credibility go to waste.
Regardless of whether you agreed with May’s position on Brexit, her leadership was nothing short of catastrophic, and she has left her country more divided, more bitter, and more vulnerable than ever. The only positive in May’s presence as Prime Minister was that she was holding off the insane, militantly anti-Europe wing of the Tory Party. Those who see the danger in ideological fanatics were grateful for her pledge to listen to Remainers and craft an agreement with the EU that didn’t plunge the country into an economic abyss. May was Godawful, but she was better than Boris Johnson or any of the other fruitcake Tories hellbent on leaving the EU with no deal to prove Britain’s credentials as a rebooted imperialist super power. With May’s resignation, there is no one left able to stave off the Brexit vultures, and Boris Johnson looks set to become the next PM.
This is Theresa May’s legacy. Boris bloody Johnson — a philandering, lazy buffoon who believes his breeding entitles him to become Prime Minister. Johnson sold the country Brexit by lying through his teeth about it, and now he will likely be responsible for negotiating the finalities of the deal. Given the EU’s extremely dim view of him, it is even more likely Britain will crash out with nothing. Johnson has built his power in the Tory Party by riling up the Brexit crazies, and once in office he will have to do their bidding. He has made his bed, but will force the whole country to lie down with him in it.
With a deeply fractured Labour Party under the pitiful leadership of leftwing ideologue Jeremy Corbyn, there is no credible opposition to the Tories. The two main parties in Britain are being ravaged by the extremists leaving a giant gap in the political center that places the country in grave danger. The political landscape is changing so fast that the future is becoming almost impossible to predict.
In times of chaos, extremism thrives, and extremism almost always breeds more extremism. If the center is not plugged soon by a new party or a coalition of centrist parties, Britain will crash out of the EU and be held hostage by a growing nationalist movement that cannot be reasoned with. There is still time to build a serious opposition to these growing forces, but it is running out with Britain set to leave the EU in October.
Theresa May was supposed to deliver the least harmful Brexit deal possible. She went to great pains to ensure her legacy was defined by this. But now May has ensured through her own hubris and stubbornness that Britain gets the worst if her party stays in power.
One can feel sorry for May on her day of reckoning, but her miserable political legacy is entirely of her own making.
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"He has made his bed, but will force the whole country to lie down with him in it."
He didn't make the bed on his own. Every single person that voted for, or in any way supported, Brexit was equally complicit. They willing chose to blind themselves to the obvious lies from those pushing it and the clear warnings from those opposing it.
I'm equally disgusted by those who voted for it because they rabidly supported it, or voted for it because they thought it had no chance to pass and it would be "fun" to vote for it because there would be no consequence to doing so. They're getting what the deserve.
(And, yes, so are we in America with our own 2016 vote.)
"In times of chaos, extremism thrives, and extremism almost always breeds more extremism. If the center is not plugged soon by a new party or a coalition of centrist parties..." Sounds alot like the US, except that May is at least mentally stable and not in bed with the Russian mafia.