It’s a crowded field but, by any objective standard, outgoing British Prime Minister Theresa May must rate as one of the worst – if not the worst – occupants of the office of all time.
Spare us the Uriah Heep-style hypocrisy and gushing ‘tributes.’ The truth is an Op-Ed on the achievements of Theresa May would be the shortest one ever written. Winston Churchill helped defeat the Nazis in World War Two. Clement Attlee gave Britain the NHS. Harold Wilson established the Open University. Ted Heath saved Rolls Royce. Gordon Brown gave over-60s and disabled people free nationwide bus travel. What did Theresa May give us except a Brexit impasse and the worst movements to Abba’s Dancing Queen ever seen?
Given the task of implementing the EU referendum vote of 2016, she gave the horse named ‘Brexit’ such a terrible ride that if she’d been a jockey she’d have been hauled before the stewards.
In 2017, she needlessly called a general election, and fought the most unimpressive election campaign any sitting prime minister has ever fought. Mr Bean himself couldn’t have ballsed it up more.
On the foreign policy front May did her bit to stoke up Cold War 2.0 tensions with Russia and in April 2018 rushed to join in with Trump’s punishment bombing of Syria before chemical weapons experts could carry out a proper investigation into reports of an attack in Douma.
Even under Thatcher it was never this bad.
In 2017, the Tory Manifesto pledged to ‘maintain’ pensioner benefits “including free bus passes, eye tests, prescriptions and TV licences, for the duration of this Parliament”.
May posed as a ‘moderate‘ – to contrast herself both from her own ‘right-wing’ and Jeremy Corbyn’s ‘left-wing extremism’ but there was, in truth, nothing moderate about her or her policies. Under her watch the gradual privatization of the NHS has continued. In March it was reported that the number waiting more than 18 weeks for operations had tripled in five years. Early this year, NHS chiefs asked May to reverse pro-privatization reforms.
In October 2018 May declared ‘austerity is over,’ but the situation on the ground was very different.
Just take a tour of Britain’s town and city centers and count the number of boarded-up retail outlets, to see the impact austerity has had.
Theresa Mayhem inspired no-one but demoralized millions.