Time up, Theresa

Paul Taylor
Jul 10, 2017 · 3 min read

Theresa May’s fall from political grace has been astonishing. Twenty four points ahead of Labour in the polls when she called her snap election, a combination of complacency, chaos and a complete failure to connect with the British public did for her much predicted landslide majority.

The general election of 2017 ended with a hung Parliament, a weak Prime Minister and an opposition that increasingly looks like a government in waiting.

The question of how long we have to wait has been muddled by Theresa May’s attempts to shore up her own position. Her aim is to keep her job. Her problem is that each time she tries, she erodes her authority and her tenability of her post.

The deal with the Democratic Unionist Party is one such example. When Sir John Major and Gerry Adams are both saying the same thing, that the deal with the DUP puts the Good Friday Agreement at risk, it is probably worth listening, especially as the devolved region still has no functioning government.

The Good Friday Agreement demands “rigorous impartiality” from both the British and Irish governments in resolving issues in Northern Ireland. That impartiality has been completely wrecked with the DUP deal. Ministers have lined up to assure the public that the money will be going to all of Northern Ireland. Assuming none of that money is “lost”, I’m sure that will be true.

It’s not the point. The DUP go into any power-sharing deal with the whip hand in negotiations. The full bung will only be paid if power-sharing is restored. This was supposed to be an incentive for the DUP to get a deal done quickly.

What Theresa May probably won’t realise is that the DUP will be just as happy to have no deal, direct rule from Westminster, and the opportunity to blame republicans for Northern Ireland not receiving its full funding.

It’ll forever paint itself as the party that brought home the bacon, even though it was May’s failure and consequent desperation that has all those bank notes fluttering down from the magic money tree. Rigorous impartiality became impossible the minute that deal was done.

On the 10th of July, Theresa May announced plans to reach out to other parties after a weekend of talk about Tory plots. Once again, this is intended to prolong her power, but it has all the potential to bring its end about sooner.

Perhaps, if Theresa May had adorned a sandwich board, bearing the legend “I have no fucking ideas whatsoever”, and marched up and down Oxford Street banging a drum, chanting “I have no fucking ideas whatsoever”, she could have made a better stab of relaying the message that she had no fucking ideas whatsoever.

Announcing that she wanted policy from other parties is an amazingly close second.

Even when May pilfered UKIP’s 2015 manifesto, more or less wholesale, to fuel her new-found Brexit zeal, she did it quiet-like.

This is a Prime Minister without authority, without ideas and without a future. How much longer must it go on? How many more compromises will the British Government make to save Theresa May’s career in a job she has repeatedly demonstrated an inability to do?

While she has fiddled ways to keep herself in office, London has literally burned. The country limps along with a fragile government with no leadership, no vision, compromised to the hilt, and able to collapse at any moment.

It’s a very poor trade for one person’s ego.

Paul Taylor

Written by

Coder. Troublemaker. Leftie. Consul at http://sotonians.com/ #saintsfc I used to be such a sweet sweet thing before they got a hold of me

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