Farewell to Theresa May, the most ineffectual Prime Minister in modern history
When Theresa May departs from Number 10 for the final time, her portrait will be added to the collection which snakes down the main staircase.
It is the ritualised ending for all Prime Ministers, good, bad or indifferent. It will be hard for her to walk down those stairs without thinking of her legacy, and how it matches up to those before her.
A Prime Minister has four real duties – to implement the agenda on which they were elected; to manage the crises of their day; to maintain the confidence of the Commons; and to lead their party to electoral success.
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There are perhaps five post-War PMs who can say that they have achieved all four – Clement Attlee, Harold Macmillan, Harold Wilson, Margaret Thatcher, and Tony Blair. While each has their critics, their ability to do the job they were elected to do is in no doubt.
Each drove through significant economic and social change and produced decisive responses to events that arose. The positives and negatives of that change are beyond the scope of this discussion – the important thing is that they each made their mark.
In addition, all managed to maintain discipline over their party colleagues, and held a majority through at least one General Election.
Beyond them, Winston Churchill perhaps deserves a special dispensation. His second period in government was not his finest hour: dogged by ill-health, inert on domestic affairs, and often reactionary abroad. His legacy was, however, already cemented and his party remained popular.
Sir Alec Douglas-Home should be excused from a full reckoning too. Governing for less than a year, the effete aristocrat did little harm, and if anything moderated the defeat the Tories knew they were headed for in 1964.
The remainder come with neither such achievements or excuses. Their tenures may have been marked by a failure to rise to the challenge, to maintain order in their own party, or to carry it over to the electorate. Yet most also managed to flirt with success, and sometimes even achieve it.
Were it not for his gamble on the referendum, David Cameron might have been considered one of the greats. He returned the Tories to power, seeing through cuts to the deficit and big reforms, and won an increased majority. He even got within 1,269,502 votes of exorcising the European ghost in the Tory machine.
Gordon Brown may have ended 13 years of Labour rule, but he acted decisively and effectively in the financial crisis. Sir John Major managed what May categorically could not, steering a controversial EU agreement through the Commons, and laid the groundwork for many of Blair’s successes, from the economy to Northern Ireland.
James Callaghan and Edward Heath each saw single terms marked by industrial discontent and economic crises. Each lost the only elections they fought as Prime Minister. Neither, however, faced the ignominious rebellions and coups from within their own ranks that May has.
Even Anthony Eden, who bungled into Suez and did little else, won an increased majority and popularised a new type of hat – two claims to popularity which May cannot make.
On surveying our leaders since the War, it’s clear that none has the record that May enjoys: the failure to achieve any major programme, to have alienated her party to the point where they considered reinventing the rule book to oust her, or to have thrown away a majority and then slumped further.
Each, when they look back on their reputation, can salvage something: bits of legislation which made a difference, foreign policy negotiations which maintained and advanced Britain’s place in the world, or simply holding together the competing ideologies and ambitions within their own party long enough to get things done. On every way of reckoning, May has been found wanting.
Any future Prime Minister will see her portrait on that staircase not as an example, but as a warning.