Theresa May was better than Boris

By Pete North - June 22, 2020

Theresa May fumbled her way through her short premiership. She wasn’t much of a leader and she had a great many shortcomings.

For the most part, though, she was motivated by duty. A duty to the country, a duty to democracy and a duty to the common good. First and foremost it was she who rammed the Article 50 bill through. She honoured the referendum unequivocally thus fulfilling all three.

But then she had the hardest job. She had to find a meeting point between the needs of the country as a whole, the Tory right, and Brussels. Some might say it was impossible.

She rapidly dispensed with the EEA option (as per the demands of the Brexiteers) in the determination that freedom of movement must end. But then she was left to square the circle of leaving but maintaining a viable trade relationship.

Ill advised as she was, she cycled through a number of flawed and unpopular solutions, be it the notion of a “goods only single market” or the ill-fated Chequers proposal, neither of which was ever going to fly with the Tory right or the EU. Her advisors were incompetent.

She had, however, grasped that regulatory harmonisation was essential to maintaining the levels of trade we currently enjoy. She was looking for ways to square the circle but largely from a position of technical ignorance. But she does get the points for trying. This was against a backdrop of a Tory right undermining her at every turn, spinning WTO mythology in the pages of the Telegraph and Spectator.

Ultimately, to the surprise of nobody, she as unable to square the circle and instead came out with the unwholesome mess that was the withdrawal agreement, to the horror of Brexiteers. Up with this they would not put. They called her a remainer and a traitor.

So now we have Boris. A man who has showed no particular interest in the Brexit process and has substantially less of a grasp of the issues than Theresa May. But legend has it that he went to Brussels and forced them to re-open the withdrawal agreement.

Technically that’s true, but it was entirely a window dressing exercise where Brussels allowed him to revert the same deal to one where the backstop become the front stop and was no longer negotiable. The backstop was a device never meant to be activated and had a firm agreement in place to ensure it was replaced if ever it was. Thanks to Boris, that no longer exists and there is now to be a permanent sea border which Boris himself said no British PM could ever agree to.

Precisely why this makes Johnson the all conquering hero continues to escape me. He managed to make a bad deal worse yet the Brexiteers hail him for it.

We are told, though, that this is more to do with his force of personality and his oration skills. When measured against Theresa May I suppose this does have some merit. I remember well the car crash conference speech where everything that could go wrong did go wrong. But then is Johnson really any better?

This is a man who burbles his way through any interrogation, peppered with irrelevances and superlatives, and manages to say absolutely nothing. After the “citizens of nowhere speech” I at least knew what Theresa May was about, and to this day I still think that speech was more in touch with real conservatism than any of the current mob.

This then has me wondering if Theresa May would have taken such a supine approach to BLM. Boris Johnson ducked the issue, delegating the statue question to police commanders. Though Theresa May was a pushover in most other respects, something about her suggests that she might well have taken a reassuringly robust line. What we can say for certain, though, is that the Tories under Boris Johnson are nothing even approaching a conservative party.

Like for like I don’t think Theresa May would have fared any better in handling the Covid crisis, and would have been equally spineless, in most instances, but Johnson has shown he is more likely to pander to the left when it matters. Theresa May certainly took a more robust line on immigration even if it didn’t produce tangible results. Johnson put Patel in charge of the Home Office, but she’s all talk.

If anything, Johnson is weaker than Theresa May. Johnson is a free rider who largely delegated stewardship of Brexit to Michael Gove, and like everything else has washed his hands of it. I’m left wondering if Johnson even does anything apart from pop up to make burbling noises every now and then. Theresa May showed more courage in standing up to the Tory right free trade headbangers while also facing down a relentless sabotage campaign from the rest of the house. Never has a British PM been more alone in such a thankless and difficult task.

From the outset Theresa May made every unforced error imaginable and squandered every opportunity. She could have forged a consensus early on but did everything possible to antagonise anyone would might lend her support. She will not be remembered with reverence but by the same token, Johnson will fail in a similar way to live up to his promise.

At the beginning they said May could potentially be another Iron Lady. I always doubted that, but they’ve lionised Johnson in a similar way as the second coming of Churchill. But even the Tory right are now beginning to realise that Johnson is an empty vessel with no leadership ability.

Theresa May stood for something. She just wasn’t up to the job. Johnson on the other hand should never have been allowed anywhere near Number 10. He is, and always, was a flim flam artist on the make and with each passing day he loses yet more of his authority. His true legacy may be to ensure that Theresa May doesn’t go down in history as Britain’s worst ever prime minister.