Meanwhile I’m getting a little pissed off at people both admiring Theresa May and feeling sorry for her. Apparently, the majority of the house, if we are to believe the popular media, is doing everything it can to wreck her plans and give her a hard time for the sake of it.
So, lets look at the reality of the situation. She jumped at the chance of becoming PM, knowing full well it was a poisoned chalice. Though then again, you could argue she was making a sacrifice to save us from Boris Johnston or Jacob Rees Mogg, and as much as I dislike May, anything is better than Boris – surely?
Having become PM, it didn’t take her too long to realise the challenge she had accepted was simply impossible. With rebels in her ranks, her 12 seat majority was simply way too thin.
With Corbyn now at the helm of the Labour party, and with the popular media tearing him to shreds on a daily basis along with his less than confident performances in the house May saw a chance to solve all her problems. With absolute certainty that Corbyn’s Labour would be wiped out at the polls she called a snap general election and waited to see how massive her majority would be after polling day. With a massive majority she could easily negotiate a deal with the EU and vote it straight through parliament. But we all know what happened next.
So now with no majority, but having managed a confidence and supply deal with the DUP – basically she bought their support with our cash – May now found herself further isolated in terms of BREXIT.
So, what did May do now. Did she reach out to parliament? Did she consider putting together a cross party BREXIT committee or other consultative means to try and find a way to negotiate a deal that would satisfy the house. Nope. She fell back on a 1539 law that allowed the Tudor Monarch to govern by proclamation. May intended to bypass parliament and in doing so our whole democratic process in order to dictate BREXIT.
So, she’s made her bed, and now she has to lie in it. I do not feel sorry for her one wee bit.
I may to some degree admire her strength and determination, but that strength and determination is also her greatest weakness. She is a woman incapable of team work, a woman who cannot build bridges, seek consensus or compromise. She was in fact always the wrong person for the job, and even in the best of times would struggle to operate as a successful PM.
This is May’s catastrophe. And having endured an incompetent PM for the last couple of years or so parliament is left with the responsibility to clean up her mess.