{"id":35324,"date":"2016-07-18T02:00:41","date_gmt":"2016-07-18T06:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=35324"},"modified":"2016-07-17T10:47:59","modified_gmt":"2016-07-17T14:47:59","slug":"britains-new-prime-minister","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2016\/07\/18\/britains-new-prime-minister\/","title":{"rendered":"Britain’s new Prime Minister"},"content":{"rendered":"

Theresa May has become the second female prime minister in British history after the victory of the Brexit referendum campaign in late June (although she was a Remain-er herself). In The Spectator<\/em>, Harry Cole<\/a> indicates what Brits should expect from their new head of government:<\/p>\n

There are plenty who have been left bruised by May\u2019s decade and a half at the top of the Conservative party, but even her worst enemies concede that the woman who is to become the next Prime Minister has shown a remarkable durability in high office. She\u2019s the longest-serving Home Secretary in half a century, and has made a success of what\u2019s very often a career-ending job.<\/p>\n

A long-retired party grandee recalls May, then newly elected to Parliament, approaching him in 1997 to ask what she must do to succeed. \u2018Ignore the little things,\u2019 he replied. It\u2019s advice that her critics reckon she has firmly ignored ever since. When he resigned as a Home Office minister, the eccentric Liberal Democrat Norman Baker described trying to work under May as \u2018walking through mud\u2019. There are Conservatives, too, including ones in the cabinet, who accuse May of being a territorial micromanager. But the wrath of her colleagues has only increased her standing with grassroots Tories.<\/p>\n

\u2018She\u2019s a boxer,\u2019 says a Home Office mandarin. \u2018She\u2019s got her gloves up all the time. Not much gets through. Always defensive.\u2019 \u2018Any special adviser in Whitehall who didn\u2019t make it their business to know exactly what is going on in their department is negligent,\u2019 contends Nick Timothy, a long-term aide and friend. \u2018She wants to know what\u2019s going on and wants to have a handle on things.\u2019<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

\u2018As long as I have known her she has always refused to allow herself to be pigeonholed by saying she is in this club or that club or on this wing or that wing of the party,\u2019 says Timothy. \u2018It confounds some people, it especially confounds the Left, that you can be so sceptical about the European Court of Human Rights, but you can care so passionately about the rights of the citizen. It confounds them that she thinks immigration needs to be much lower, at the same time as introducing the first legislation of its kind on modern slavery. I don\u2019t think that\u2019s inconsistent, I think that she\u2019s a sound conservative who believes in social justice.\u2019<\/p>\n

This is one of the secrets of May\u2019s success. While she may be a defensive boxer with her gloves up, her feet are also moving incredibly quickly. That lack of pinpointing makes it very hard to define her, and thus attack her, though some will always try. \u2018We will never ever forget the nasty party comment,\u2019 says one prominent right-winger. \u2018No matter how many terrorists she sends back or tough-sounding speeches she gives. She gave a name to our branding problem and it will be hung around our neck for decades by our enemies. It has damaged us as much as the misquoted \u201cno such thing as society\u201d.\u2019 But while she may not be of the traditional right, there is certainly something very traditional about May as a person and as a politician. \u2018If you say you are going to do a dinner, you can\u2019t cancel it. She gets enormously annoyed if it looks like she might have to cancel something which has been a commitment she has given,\u2019 says Cunningham. \u2018I wouldn\u2019t go as far as old-fashioned, but just a very traditional \u2014 do the right thing, you can\u2019t let people down.\u2019 \u2018Strong sense of a proper way of doing things,\u2019 echoes a friend.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Theresa May has become the second female prime minister in British history after the victory of the Brexit referendum campaign in late June (although she was a Remain-er herself). In The Spectator, Harry Cole indicates what Brits should expect from their new head of government: There are plenty who have been left bruised by May\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,84,53],"tags":[431,572,458,1069],"class_list":["post-35324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-government","category-politics","tag-conservatism","tag-leadership","tag-parliament","tag-theresamay"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-9bK","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35324"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35324\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35326,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35324\/revisions\/35326"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}