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BooScout

(10,406 posts)
Fri May 24, 2019, 06:45 AM May 2019

Theresa May to resign as prime minister

Good riddance...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-48395905

Theresa May to resign as prime minister


Theresa May has said she will quit as Conservative leader on 7 June, paving the way for a contest to decide a new prime minister.

In an emotional statement, she said she had done her best to deliver Brexit and it was a matter of "deep regret" that she had been unable to do so.

Being prime minister had been the "honour of my life", she said.

(More) https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-48395905

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T_i_B

(14,734 posts)
2. Whilst Theresa May took on a poisoned chalice with the job...
Fri May 24, 2019, 07:47 AM
May 2019

...she failed to stand up to far right and the fantasists on her own side and has taken this country to the brink of meltdown. Her handling of the project to leave the EU has been very poor indeed.

Easily the worst Prime Minister of my lifetime, and probably even worse than Lord North!

I won't be celebrating her demise because the Conservative Party does not appear to be about to elect anyone who would be an improvement.

Denzil_DC

(7,188 posts)
4. May's Thatcheresque crack-up at the end of her speech has excited some sympathy
Fri May 24, 2019, 07:58 AM
May 2019

from certain quarters.

This woman is a bully, plain and simple.

From her bombastic performances at Prime Minister's Questions backed by her baying horde of backbenchers to presiding over the "hostile environment" to the punitive benefits regime that has led to large numbers of deaths among the most vulnerable in our society to her grandstanding premature triggering of Article 50 to the "crush the saboteurs" rhetoric to her utter refusal to seek compromise or even formulate a credible exit plan until it was too late, she's been a total disaster as prime minister and as a human being.

Not that any of her likely replacements are more palatable or competent.

LeftishBrit

(41,192 posts)
6. She'll be replaced by worse, I fear
Fri May 24, 2019, 01:29 PM
May 2019

Quite possibly by B***s J*****n (ugh ugh ugh)

And Brexit isn't somewhere out there stuck in the post, waiting to be 'delivered'. It's a fantasy creature.

T_i_B

(14,734 posts)
8. Chris Grayling has announced that he will run for leader
Sat May 25, 2019, 06:14 AM
May 2019

Liberal Democrat sources say that they were very surprised to receive his nomination papers and suspect that he will find it a struggle to get the support of 10% of their MP's!

T_i_B

(14,734 posts)
9. Don't start pining for Theresa May: she was unspeakably dire and this disaster's on her
Wed Jun 12, 2019, 02:56 AM
Jun 2019
https://www.politics.co.uk/comment-analysis/2019/06/11/don-t-start-pining-for-theresa-may-she-was-unspeakably-dire

Consider the actions of a prime minister in May's position who genuinely cared about the national interest. They would have recognised the gravity of the situation from the beginning, and used their political capital to start telling necessary truths and building inevitable compromises. They would have spent months drawing up a comprehensive plan for triggering Article 50, found out exactly what was achievable and in what time frame. They would have used good faith to craft dialogues, alliances and back-up plans. They would have squared with voters and MPs alike.

May refused to do any of this. She interpreted the result in the most damaging way available to her, triggered the formal process much too early, and didn't bother to educate herself about any of it until after the talks had begun. Where she could have told the truth, she instead branded any moderate compromise as betrayal. Where she could have defeated the hardline Brexiters with her superior power, she instead aligned herself with them time and time again, even when it was clear she could never placate them and they would eventually turn on her. Where she could have shown leadership and courage, she instead failed to tell any Leavers that they would lose out, either because she didn't know or didn't want to know. Neither was good enough. Each action was conceived and implemented in a bunker insulated from reality. When problems struck, May simply pretended they didn't exist or manufactured a short-term fix to take her to the end of that particular week.

In office May became a compulsive liar. She lied that we would have a trade deal ready to implement in March 2019, when in June 2019 the multiple-year negotiations for it have not even begun. She lied that the backstop did not include a customs union, and lied about our freedom to sign trade deals while participating in it. She denied that we would enter into a transition, or pay a significant divorce bill, or continue free movement after 2019, even though it soon became obvious to anyone with a passing interest in politics, history or reality. She insisted, Trump-style, that her government's statistics did not show Brexit would make us less prosperous (they did), and that there was a Brexit dividend she could spend on the NHS (there wasn't). May must have known she would eventually have to climb down and admit the defeat of each lie, but each time she simply replaced it with something else. By the time she stopped lying, it was too late to tell the truth.

People sometimes act as though Theresa May was forced into this, or remained for so long out of a sense of duty. The reality seems far more banal. The prime minister was simply crippled by hubris from the start. As soon as she took power, senior officials reported that she haughtily dismissed their advice (and frequently their facts) on the grounds that she had negotiated an EU opt-out while home secretary, and they had not. She refused to concede a scrap of personal responsibility even when her deal was defeated over and over again, including by the largest margin in parliamentary history. Her response was always the same: blame MPs, blame the EU, and stick to the script that had already confounded her. Her most famous gaffe became her only abiding mantra: nothing would change. Other prime ministers had resigned for a tenth of the humiliation, but May seemed to convince herself she possessed both the political skills and parliamentary majority of Tony Blair. Sadly for her, nobody else could enter the elaborate make-believe world which had become her permanent cocoon.
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