The Worst Prime Minister?

Was Theresa May the worst Prime Minister this country has ever seen? She's up against stiff competition, from both her immediate predecessor and the utter void following her. Whatever verdict history decrees, her record in government is almost singularly awful. Even if you sit and meditate on the last three years, surely the most earnest Tory would have difficulty picking out a May achievement that isn't spin and hot air.

A fair few words have been expended on May on this place, so I won't try your patience by saying much more. Except to reiterate two things about her legacy, both of which are inseparable. On Brexit, May bears a large share of the responsibility for normalising the idea of a no deal Brexit with her idiot mantra of no deal is better than a bad deal. This line, more than anything Nigel Farage has said, strengthened and emboldened the hard right of the Tory party. You know, the people tied to the most backward and reckless sections of capital. She offered them succour as she lived from one crisis of the parliamentary party to the next, up to the point where she couldn't hide her deal any more and enraged them with the Irish backstop nonsense. In reality, if May had read the runes correctly she might have interpreted her position as one of strength. As explained here many times, because everyone around May was jockeying for position they all balanced out, giving her a some leeway. She could have told the ERG to hop it from the off, but failed miserably to do so.

This is because Brexit was subordinate to Tory party management. As factions proliferated and the party grew consumed by row after bad headline after record-breaking defeats, her sole concern was keeping the show on the road. Like Dave and, inevitably, like Johnson, May instinctively knows that ultimately, her party is the only one who can be trusted with the interests of her class. The LibDems are too weak and aren't about to make a comeback, regardless of what YouGov says, and Labour is always at risk of getting swamped by the hoi polloi and articulating their interests against capital. Therefore the preservation of the Tories is and will always be the number one concern of its leading figures, even if the increasingly unhinged base are a touch more sanguine. Therefore the twists and turns of May's Brexit strategy, and studied refusal to budge despite losing the vote three times were driven by keeping the Tories together. And it is why Johnson too has made a song and dance about leaving the EU on Hallowe'en regardless. If he gives away this hostage to fortune, it's curtains for Johnson and perhaps the party itself.

May will be best remembered for her Brexit incompetence, but we cannot let her off her other obsession: immigration. No matter how weak she was, this was the one issue she refused to budge on. Indeed, her pitiful withdrawal deal happily trades away unimpeded access to EU markets - the UK's biggest trading partner, in case you had forgot - just so she could impose a points-based system for EU nationals. Why was the author of the racist vans that drove around parts of London, and of the Windrush scandal completely consumed by this question? Was it because May herself was racist? That really is irrelevant: what did May gain, or hope to gain, by being seen to be tough on immigration? And the answer is, just like Brexit, the continued health of the Tory party. Her preoccupation with this matter didn't begin with Brexit, but having imbibed the common sense of the right wing press over decades, and the antipathy they stirred up and was reflected in poll after poll, May believed the route to Tory hegemony meant owning it. She knew the Brexit vote was largely driven by concerns about immigration, and that this had cost the Tories dear in the past as UKIP grew and, eventually, disposed of her predecessor. A revolt on the right could be permanently foreclosed, and another 10 to 15 years in government would be there for the taking.

And there you have it. The premiership of Theresa May. Someone who, at every turn, put her party before the country because, as far as she was concerned, the minority interest of her class is the national interest. If it meant permanently weakening the UK economy, that's a price worth paying for untrammelled bourgeois rule. If people are stripped of their jobs, their healthcare, and bungled on to the next plane to the Caribbean, then their suffering is absolutely fine as long as the Conservative Party continues. Yes, May was and is an appalling human being. But until her party is driven from office and put into a place where it can never form a government, we will see the likes of her again, and again, and again.