There was a brief flicker of relief when British Prime Minister Theresa May was crowned by her party. At least she was not Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, Andrea Leadsom or any of that gallery of extremist Brexiters and free market ideologues. But the country hardly knew her then. Surely, some hoped, she had an air of competence and solidity acquired from six years in the perilous Home Office, where few survive long without mishap. Only now is it obvious how lucky she was to be viewed in this light — but now her record has come back to haunt her.
Her husband usefully revealed on the One Show sofa that she had been quietly planning her ascent for years. But anointed with no irksome contest, she was never tested under fire. Now she is and the country knows her better.
Remember, she chose to put herself through this election. Soaring 20 points ahead, she broke her word to grab the chance of a landslide. She thought Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s weaknesses would be enough that he would draw the fire while she basked in the glow of that comparison. But she reckoned without the unforgiving searchlight of a general election. Nothing has gone to plan as the words “strong and stable” have been scrubbed from her backdrop. A nervy emptiness has emerged, as she drops clunking, arid platitudes on the toes of even her most sycophantic interviewers.
The fearsome terror attacks of recent weeks might have been expected to rally people round their leader, but instead they leave her challenged. Why did she cut 20,000 police and reduce the firearms force at a time of rising risk? No use now calling for draconian powers or tougher sentences when she neither demanded them in the Home Office nor put them in her manifesto.
These “do something” gestures come without the nobler thoughts a leader needs to summon at a time of national heartbreak. “Enough is enough” is as inept and vacuous a response as “Brexit means Brexit”. Of course she is not to blame for outrages so fiendishly hard to prevent, but she can’t pin it on “far too much tolerance of extremism” either. What tolerance? Hers in those Home Office years?
We know her better than we did, but the more we see the less there seems to be. Under the stiff carapace is a hollowness, a lack of empathy, language or political imagination. How alarmingly narrow is her circle for decision-making. Her clumsy inflexibility bodes ill for European Union negotiations. Has she the nerve to tell Britain the difficult truth that high tariffs would result in economic calamity — a price for immigration control too high to be worth paying?
Five years of a May government is a terrible prospect. Here are just 10 of the multitudinous reasons why:
n 1. This great, economy-crushing austerity will stretch out forever. Her first budget continues the tightening of the screw and reaffirms the intent to shrink the state to just 35 per cent of gross domestic product, far below any comparable EU country.
n 2. Her “No deal is better than a bad deal” approach to Brexit is dishonest: She will be forced to backtrack as she must know no deal is the worst possible outcome. She approaches our neighbours as if declaring war, when staying close is an economic and geopolitical necessity in a threatening world. Her wisest words from the Home Office were these: “Remaining a member of the EU means we will be more secure from crime and terrorism.”
n 3. “There is no magic money tree,” she brutally told a nurse who has had no pay rise in eight years, when she appeared on Question Time. She refuses to admit the National Health Service (NHS) is in deep crisis. Until this week, she said she had cut the police with no ill-effect, so why shouldn’t the NHS tighten its belt? Those words on the police die on her lips now.
n 4. Her U-turn on funding social care out of the untaxed capital gains of the older generation’s house-price bonanza shows how easily she can be blown over by any gust from moneyed interests. Her £1 million (Dh4.73 million) inheritance tax threshold will strengthen the power of family wealth.
n 5. Schools are, says the Institute for Fiscal Studies, facing their largest spending cut since the 1970s, as teachers and teaching assistants are shed and school places fall short.
n 6. The Daily Mail is her spiritual guide; its editor, Paul Dacre, her compass. She never challenges its warped version of middle England. She dare not stand up to the Mail’s hard Brexit demands.
n 7. Her dash to be first to hold United States President Donald Trump’s hand shows her failure to understand how his presidency changes Britain’s global interests, and she fails to challenge him even on climate change.
n 8. Her expansion of faith schools while allowing them 100 per cent faith selection helps breed intolerance and segregation, just as her grammar schools breed social class division.
n 9. Her £12 billion benefit cuts will hit working families hardest: The Institute for Fiscal Studies expects her to send a million more children into poverty. Deep cuts to disability benefits are a moral affront.
n 10. Council cuts of 40 per cent have devastated local services, social care and child protection, and closed libraries and swimming pools, day and Sure Start centres, with worse to come.
Whenever Conservatives are in power, the low-paid suffer, the wealthy prosper and public services are starved of funds, leaving the social fabric threadbare. Every Labour government reverses that trend. This time the stakes are higher than ever: there is no doubt that a Corbyn Labour team, led by Keir Starmer, will negotiate Brexit in a productive spirit bound to yield better results than May’s confrontation. Corbyn is determined to gain tariff-free access to the single market, without which the future is dark. Labour’s Keynesian manifesto is the kickstart the economy needs.
The choice today is the starkest for decades. Whatever misgivings I and many others had over Corbyn, he has fought an optimistic campaign. Compare Labour with the prospect of May as austerity personified, and there is no contest. Every seat won against the Tories makes a hard Brexit less likely - and that is the overriding jeopardy of our era.
— Guardian News & Media Ltd
Polly Toynbee is a columnist for the Guardian. She was formerly BBC social affairs editor, columnist and associate editor of the Independent.
