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| A safe pair of hands? Theresa May has taken a massive gamble A safe pair of hands? Theresa May has taken a massive gamble | |
| (4 months later) | |
| The Unknown Prime Minister was the title of Robert Blake’s biography of the largely forgotten Conservative premier of the 1920s, Andrew Bonar Law. But it could in some respects apply to Law’s latest successor, too. Few modern politicians have climbed to the top of the proverbial greasy pole while revealing so little to the world about their politics as Theresa May has managed to do. | The Unknown Prime Minister was the title of Robert Blake’s biography of the largely forgotten Conservative premier of the 1920s, Andrew Bonar Law. But it could in some respects apply to Law’s latest successor, too. Few modern politicians have climbed to the top of the proverbial greasy pole while revealing so little to the world about their politics as Theresa May has managed to do. |
| The limited stock of standard observations about May became overworked as the former home secretary surged from outsider to favourite and then to comfortable winner in the David Cameron succession stakes. She is a traditional Tory, she is experienced, she gets on with the job, she is calm, she is a safe pair of hands. Yet barely two days into the May premiership, these platitudes can now be safely pensioned off. | The limited stock of standard observations about May became overworked as the former home secretary surged from outsider to favourite and then to comfortable winner in the David Cameron succession stakes. She is a traditional Tory, she is experienced, she gets on with the job, she is calm, she is a safe pair of hands. Yet barely two days into the May premiership, these platitudes can now be safely pensioned off. |
| May has done three truly astonishing things, just one of which would go a long way to confound the cliches. | May has done three truly astonishing things, just one of which would go a long way to confound the cliches. |
| First, she has brought in from the cold a group of senior Brexiteer troublemakers and given them key roles in resolving Britain’s post-referendum relationship with the EU. Second, by sacking the chancellor, George Osborne, she has marked a brutal break not just with the personalities, but also with the politics of the government in which she served without much apparent demur for six years. And third, she has delivered one of the most arrestingly inclusive speeches about her domestic priorities – echoed in her first remarks as prime minister on Wednesday – to come from the lips of any Conservative leader for years. | First, she has brought in from the cold a group of senior Brexiteer troublemakers and given them key roles in resolving Britain’s post-referendum relationship with the EU. Second, by sacking the chancellor, George Osborne, she has marked a brutal break not just with the personalities, but also with the politics of the government in which she served without much apparent demur for six years. And third, she has delivered one of the most arrestingly inclusive speeches about her domestic priorities – echoed in her first remarks as prime minister on Wednesday – to come from the lips of any Conservative leader for years. |
| May’s senior cabinet appointments were audacious. To rescue the careers not just of Boris Johnson and Liam Fox but also of David Davis, while waving goodbye to both Cameron and Osborne, is a dramatic reminder that the Brexit vote defines everything the new prime minister has to deal with. Safety first it definitely is not. It adds up to a huge gamble with both the Conservative party and the direction of the country. | May’s senior cabinet appointments were audacious. To rescue the careers not just of Boris Johnson and Liam Fox but also of David Davis, while waving goodbye to both Cameron and Osborne, is a dramatic reminder that the Brexit vote defines everything the new prime minister has to deal with. Safety first it definitely is not. It adds up to a huge gamble with both the Conservative party and the direction of the country. |
| May's appointment of three senior Brexiteers is a statement that they must own the consequences of the referendum | May's appointment of three senior Brexiteers is a statement that they must own the consequences of the referendum |
| The appointment of the three senior Brexiteers is not merely an attempt by May to cement the loyalty of the Tory right or to gratify the Eurosceptic press – although it is both of these things as well. Much more fundamentally, it is a statement that the Brexiteers must own the Brexit decision and its consequences. They wanted the leave vote. They made it happen. Now it is their responsibility – and not the government’s remainers – to make the choices that follow from it. | The appointment of the three senior Brexiteers is not merely an attempt by May to cement the loyalty of the Tory right or to gratify the Eurosceptic press – although it is both of these things as well. Much more fundamentally, it is a statement that the Brexiteers must own the Brexit decision and its consequences. They wanted the leave vote. They made it happen. Now it is their responsibility – and not the government’s remainers – to make the choices that follow from it. |
| This will stick in the craw of Tory and non-Tory pro-Europeans. And so it should. The leave vote took our country away from us. But it may prove to be smart politics, and not only in internal Tory terms. It will force Johnson, Fox and Davis, very different political animals, to make hard choices. These will be their negotiations and their decisions and the outcome will be theirs, too. | This will stick in the craw of Tory and non-Tory pro-Europeans. And so it should. The leave vote took our country away from us. But it may prove to be smart politics, and not only in internal Tory terms. It will force Johnson, Fox and Davis, very different political animals, to make hard choices. These will be their negotiations and their decisions and the outcome will be theirs, too. |
| This doesn’t entirely rule out the dangers to May of a myth of Brexit betrayal taking root on the Tory right – or in post-Farage Ukip, but it certainly makes it a lot more difficult. If the Brexiteers had been excluded, then sooner or later the right would howl that they was robbed and that it was all May’s fault. This way, if Brexit ends in tears, the right have to take full responsibility (though of course they never will). | This doesn’t entirely rule out the dangers to May of a myth of Brexit betrayal taking root on the Tory right – or in post-Farage Ukip, but it certainly makes it a lot more difficult. If the Brexiteers had been excluded, then sooner or later the right would howl that they was robbed and that it was all May’s fault. This way, if Brexit ends in tears, the right have to take full responsibility (though of course they never will). |
| The sacking of Osborne is important in other ways too. Dumping a chancellor is always a big statement, always a turning point. Osborne has been oozing blood in the water ever since the bungled tax credit changes in the March budget. His role in the referendum campaign ensured there would be no rehabilitation. But the message goes further. | The sacking of Osborne is important in other ways too. Dumping a chancellor is always a big statement, always a turning point. Osborne has been oozing blood in the water ever since the bungled tax credit changes in the March budget. His role in the referendum campaign ensured there would be no rehabilitation. But the message goes further. |
| Alongside Cameron’s departure, the Osborne sacking marks a very visible end to the decade of metropolitan posh boy dominance of the Tory party that even Johnson’s rehabilitation cannot entirely obscure. Part of this is revenge by May against a clique from which she herself was excluded, and which made life hard for her – the sacking of Michael Gove was particularly personal. | Alongside Cameron’s departure, the Osborne sacking marks a very visible end to the decade of metropolitan posh boy dominance of the Tory party that even Johnson’s rehabilitation cannot entirely obscure. Part of this is revenge by May against a clique from which she herself was excluded, and which made life hard for her – the sacking of Michael Gove was particularly personal. |
| But it is also a verdict on the modernisers’ way of doing politics – the gimmicks, the hyperactive courting of the press, and the addiction, so damaging to Osborne in particular, to tactical positioning. Above all, though, it is an attempt to call time on the modernisers’ conspicuous inability to connect their world with the majority of Britain that feels excluded, left behind and unappreciated by London. | But it is also a verdict on the modernisers’ way of doing politics – the gimmicks, the hyperactive courting of the press, and the addiction, so damaging to Osborne in particular, to tactical positioning. Above all, though, it is an attempt to call time on the modernisers’ conspicuous inability to connect their world with the majority of Britain that feels excluded, left behind and unappreciated by London. |
| This is the context for what could be the most daring aspect of May’s premiership in the longer term – her readiness to use government to redress the deepening financial and social imbalances of the recent past. Her speech in Birmingham on Monday was a signpost towards a kind of Toryism that has become unfamiliar in both the Thatcherite and the modernising eras. | This is the context for what could be the most daring aspect of May’s premiership in the longer term – her readiness to use government to redress the deepening financial and social imbalances of the recent past. Her speech in Birmingham on Monday was a signpost towards a kind of Toryism that has become unfamiliar in both the Thatcherite and the modernising eras. |
| May’s promise of a break with the past, her attacks on financial and business elites and on pay gaps, her embrace of things like an industrial strategy, regionalism, and codetermination by employees, and her repeated focus on the problems faced by the less well-off, adds up to an enormous agenda. Many will be tempted to dismiss it as mere warm words. And clearly she didn’t get everything right – the number of women entering the cabinet was oversold. | May’s promise of a break with the past, her attacks on financial and business elites and on pay gaps, her embrace of things like an industrial strategy, regionalism, and codetermination by employees, and her repeated focus on the problems faced by the less well-off, adds up to an enormous agenda. Many will be tempted to dismiss it as mere warm words. And clearly she didn’t get everything right – the number of women entering the cabinet was oversold. |
| How far she can achieve her stated goals, especially in the destabilising context of the Brexit negotiations, is questionable. But if May gets her way, this could evolve into an agenda that owes more to the municipal activism of Joseph Chamberlain – who she referenced in her speech on Monday – and the middle way one-nation approach of Harold Macmillan, than to Margaret Thatcher or Cameron. | How far she can achieve her stated goals, especially in the destabilising context of the Brexit negotiations, is questionable. But if May gets her way, this could evolve into an agenda that owes more to the municipal activism of Joseph Chamberlain – who she referenced in her speech on Monday – and the middle way one-nation approach of Harold Macmillan, than to Margaret Thatcher or Cameron. |
| May is not an economic liberal in either the Thatcherite sense or in the more modern globalising sense embraced by Osborne. She has protectionist instincts and social harmony priorities. She believes in government, not in the top-down planned economy sense, but in the classic stabilising of the nation state sense. | May is not an economic liberal in either the Thatcherite sense or in the more modern globalising sense embraced by Osborne. She has protectionist instincts and social harmony priorities. She believes in government, not in the top-down planned economy sense, but in the classic stabilising of the nation state sense. |
| Her years at the Home Office, grappling with security and immigration – not always successfully or attractively – have reinforced this. Unlike so many other Tories of various traditions in the past 40 years, she is not afraid of the state’s economic or social role. Perhaps she is best thought of as a post-liberal politician. And if ours is indeed an era in which the shiny confidence in globalisation has worn paper thin, she may have it in her to be an emblematic political voice of a post-liberal age. | Her years at the Home Office, grappling with security and immigration – not always successfully or attractively – have reinforced this. Unlike so many other Tories of various traditions in the past 40 years, she is not afraid of the state’s economic or social role. Perhaps she is best thought of as a post-liberal politician. And if ours is indeed an era in which the shiny confidence in globalisation has worn paper thin, she may have it in her to be an emblematic political voice of a post-liberal age. |