Theresa May was dealt the worst of hands and has played it spectacularly badly | Andrew Rawnsley

She got the keys to Number 10 because Tory MPs thought her a safe bet. She’s been anything but

It nearly always ends in tears, whether they are shed publicly or just inside, but few premierships have drawn to a close with such wretchedness as that visited on Theresa May. She’s not quite out of the door yet and other Tories are already describing her as the worst prime minister in a hundred years. That is a savage verdict when the competition for this dismal accolade includes Neville Chamberlain, Ramsay MacDonald, Anthony Eden and David Cameron.

I think we can safely say she will not be remembered as one of the more strong and stable occupants of Number 10. Hilarious as it may seem today, she seized the keys in the summer of 2016 because colleagues thought her “a safe pair of hands”. She commended herself to Tory MPs – and was pretty popular with a lot of voters – as she seemed to promise a premiership of common sense and calm after the anarchic orgy of backstabbing unleashed by the Cameronian, Johnsonian and Goveite cliques. In that largely forgotten period when she appeared to be monarch of all she surveyed, and the cabinet was terrified of her, she was variously compared to Boudicca and Elizabeth I. To some of us, the early cult of Theresa was ridiculous even at the time. It is now so risible that thinking about it for too long risks permanent injury to your abdomen.

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/2FHrJQK

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