James PHEBY -
Theresa May had a mission to fight Britain’s “burning injustices” through strong and stable leadership — yet her legacy as prime minister will be anything but.
The Conservative premier’s turbulent time in office was swamped and ultimately sunk by her legacy-defining battle to secure a Brexit divorce deal. It eroded her authority and led her to step down as leader, handing over the keys to Downing Street to Boris Johnson on Wednesday.
May won praise for her determination and ability to survive a rolling three-year political crisis since the referendum vote to leave the European Union. But her approach to the Brexit endgame, refusing to accept MPs’ trenchant opposition to her deal before belatedly opening ultimately futile negotiations with the Labour main opposition, left May politically adrift.
In a forlorn bid in March to appease the most ardent eurosceptic MPs in her party, May, 62, offered to resign if they finally approved her deal. But several dozen rebelled anyway, consigning it to a third defeat in parliament and leaving her premiership mortally weakened.
MPs’ patience ran out and she was forced in May to name the date of her departure, triggering the fevered leadership race to replace her.
“She has failed,” said Simon Usherwood, from the University of Surrey’s politics department. “There’s very little to commend her.
“She doesn’t really have a legacy”.
May’s last major act as leader was to welcome US President Donald Trump on a state visit to Britain, but symbolic of their fractious relationship, the two still had time for one last falling out.
The president tweeted that May had made “a mess” of Brexit, while the prime minister slammed his recent controversial comments against US congresswomen of colour as “completely unacceptable”.
The daughter of a Church of England vicar, May was born on October 1, 1956 in Eastbourne — a seaside town in southern England where her father was a chaplain at the local hospital.
She has described herself in interviews as a “goody two-shoes” whose Protestant faith defined her upbringing.
She listened to cricket matches on the radio with her father, watching from the stands last week as England won their first World Cup, and knew that she wanted to become a politician when she was just 12. May studied geography and met her husband Philip at Oxford University before joining the Bank of England. The two never had children and May devoted herself to a life of public service that saw her become Conservative Party chairwoman in 2002. She became prime minister in the aftermath of the 2016 Brexit referendum which swept away her predecessor David Cameron. — AFP
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