Don't Cry For Me, Spartan Theresa

Everyone get the hankies out!

The truth is, I never loved you.

On Friday, 24 May 2019, Conservative Party Prime Minister of the UK, Theresa May, after months of dropping popularity, and poor handling of the UK’s exit from the EU, announced that she would resign with effect from 9 June 2019.  She gave this announcement in a long speech outside 10 Downing Street, and in which she made many claims, and choked back her tears at the end.

Here is my response, which carefully examines ever sentence of that speech, and gives my reaction to it.

“Ever since I first stepped through the door behind me as prime minister, I have striven to make the United Kingdom a country that works not just for a privileged few, but for everyone.”

No, you have not.  You have in fact created a UK that is more fractured and unequal that it has ever been in recent history.

“And to honour the result of the E.U. referendum.  Back in 2016, we gave the British people a choice.”

A choice which was ill-informed, and based on scaremongering and lies on both sides, but mostly from the Leave campaign, who have since been proven to have acted illegally during the campaign.

”Against all predictions, the British people voted to leave the European Union.”

Nonsense.  It was well known that a vote to leave the EU was more than likely.  As far back as 2014 I was warning people in Scotland that if they voted No to Scottish independence, then the likelihood would be that we would find ourselves tied to the UK, and out of the EU.   It gives me absolutely no pleasure to have been proven correct in that prediction.   Indeed, there would have not have been a EU referendum had it not been for the weak leadership of former Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron, in bowing to the demands of Nigel Farage, UKIP, other Eurosceptics, as well as outright racists and xenophobes.

“I feel as certain today as I did three years ago that in a democracy, if you give people a choice you have a duty to implement what they decide.”

It is always laudable to stand by a democratic decision.  However, in the case of the 2016 EU membership, no-one knew what they were actually voting for.  There was no explanation of how the exit from the EU would be achieved, or the implications of what leaving the EU would mean for the UK, or it’s constituent nations and regions.  Not to mention that those who voted to leave the EU did so on the basis of misinformation, propaganda, and in some cases outright lies.

”I have done my best to do that.  I negotiated the terms of our exit and a new relationship with our closest neighbours that protects jobs, our security and our union.”

Indeed you did not.  You presented a deal which was the worst of all worlds, which would in fact cost jobs, and has in fact already cost jobs, threaten security, and could lead to the break up of the United Kingdom.  Ever since you presented your deal, there has been an enormous rise in support for Scottish independence, the business community in Northern Ireland are now saying that perhaps a united Ireland is the answer – and the people are listening, Plaid Cymru are once more on the rise in Wales, and even Mebyon Kernow are now showing renewed promise in Cornwall.

Your ‘closest neighbours’ are in fact those constituent nations of the UK which you claim to hold so dear to heart.  Yet you consistently ignored and snubbed Nicola Sturgeon, the First Minister of Scotland, refused her of SNP ministers a say in Brexit negotiations, and have even flouted parliamentary procedure when Ian Turnbull and other SNP MPs have been speaking in the House of Commons.  You have consistently and repeatedly been told that your deal does nothing to address the problem of the UK / Irish border in Northern Ireland, and threatens the peace and security of the province, where the Good Friday Agreement ended 30 years of bloodshed.  Instead, you have brushed the ‘backstop’ off as if it were nothing, even claiming that new technology could be used; technology which does not in fact yet exist.

“I have done everything I can to convince MPs to back that deal.  Sadly, I have not been able to do so.  I tried three times.  I believe it was right to persevere, even when the odds against success seemed high.”

No, you simply arrogantly and ignorantly refused to listen to voices wiser than your own that your deal is completely unworkable.  That it does not address the NI backstop, that it would lead to mayhem of goods and people travelling between the UK and the EU, and that it would in fact leave the UK in a position of having to agree to EU terms, while not actually having a say in that legislation; which is precisely what many who voted Leave claimed to be against in the first place.

You are the very one who claimed earlier in this speech “if you give people a choice you have a duty to implement what they decide”.  Yet not content with the House of Commons telling you a clear and emphatic “NO” to your deal, you presented it a second time, then when it failed, presented a third time, only for it to fail again.  It therefore beggars belief that before you decided to resign, you were fully intending to present it for a fourth time.  Where then is your commitment to democracy?

“But it is now clear to me that it is in the best interests of the country for a new prime minister to lead that effort.  So I am today announcing that I will resign as leader of the Conservative and Unionist Party on Friday, 7 June, so that a successor can be chosen.  I have agreed with the party chairman and with the chairman of the 1922 Committee that the process for electing a new leader should begin in the following week.  I have kept Her Majesty the Queen fully informed of my intentions, and I will continue to serve as her prime minister until the process has concluded.”

There were many times you should have stepped down long before now.  The first of these was the 2017 General Election.  You called a snap General Election to prove that the UK was behind the way you were handling Brexit.  That failed miserably, and it was a clear message to you that the electorate did not in fact trust your handling of Brexit.  Any dignified politician would have taken the message, and did the honourable thing in standing down.  Instead you made a deal with the DUP to form a minority government.  And I would point out that is the DUP which has a strongly sectarian, anti-Catholic history and membership, who voted against the Good Friday Agreement, who are strongly anti-abortion, and are just as strongly opposed to LGBT+ people, with the result that Northern Ireland is now the last remaining part not just of the UK, but of the whole physical British Isles, where abortion and same-sex marriage remain illegal.  And you claim to have “striven to make the United Kingdom a country that works not just for a privileged few, but for everyone.”

You likewise should have stepped down the first time your Brexit deal was defeated in the House of Commons, by a margin of 230, making it the greatest Commons defeat in history.  That it was subsequently defeated again, that should have been a clear message to you to go.  And that is before I even mention all the other failures and scandals of your disastrous premiership.

“It is, and will always remain, a matter of deep regret to me that I have not been able to deliver Brexit.  It will be for my successor to seek a way forward that honours the result of the referendum.  To succeed, he or she will have to find consensus in Parliament where I have not.  Such a consensus can only be reached if those on all sides of the debate are willing to compromise.”

Indeed, compromise and diplomacy are what makes politics.  But if your successor is to succeed, then they must be willing to listen to all sides, where you, in ignoring Scotland and Northern Ireland, and to everyone pointing out all the failures of your deal were completely unwilling to listen.  They must not, as you did, try to continually present a Bill which is unwanted, unworkable, and the worst of all worlds.  They must be willing to listen carefully, discuss and debate with all, to take their ideas on board, and to scrap plans and start again where necessary.  They must also be willing to listen to the growing number of voices across the UK calling for a second referendum on EU membership.

“For many years the great humanitarian Sir Nicholas Winton — who saved the lives of hundreds of children by arranging their evacuation from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia through the Kindertransport — was my constituent in Maidenhead.  At another time of political controversy, a few years before his death, he took me to one side at a local event and gave me a piece of advice.  He said, ‘Never forget that compromise is not a dirty word. Life depends on compromise.’  He was right.”

Well, for a start, using an appeal to emotion is a low blow, even for you.  I have no doubt that Sir Nicholas Winton, who was indeed a great man, was absolutely correct.  But one wonders what he would say today if he could hear you abusing his kindness towards those children for your own selfish political motives?  I doubt he would be impressed, and neither am I.

Where was your supposed care about the Windrush Generation?  British Commonwealth citizens who had come to the UK quite legally, had lived in the UK most of their lives, and who legally had right to remain, suddenly being classed as illegal immigrants, having benefits removed, and with the NHS, landlords, and others being told to report them to the Home Office, and many means of pressure put upon them to leave the UK.  Of course, I realise that the Home Office Hostile Environment Policy, which was designed to pressurise ‘non-patrials’ to leave the UK was started before you were Prime Minister.  Indeed, it was started in 2013 under the then Home Secretary – Theresa May MP.  It was you who ordered the vans to go around the streets “asking” people to leave the UK.  It was you who was responsible for illegal deportations.  It was you responsible for deaths in custody.  It was you who said that your policy was to, and I quote, “deport first and hear appeals later”.  And of course, it was you who continued that policy into your Prime Ministership.

“As we strive to find the compromises we need in our politics — whether to deliver Brexit, or to restore devolved government in Northern Ireland — we must remember what brought us here.  Because the referendum was not just a call to leave the E.U. but for profound change in our country.  A call to make the United Kingdom a country that truly works for everyone. I am proud of the progress we have made over the last three years.  We have completed the work that David Cameron and George Osborne started: The deficit is almost eliminated, our national debt is falling and we are bringing an end to austerity.”

Indeed, the deficit is down.  It fell to £24.7bn – which is actually short of the government’s own forecast to bring it down to £22.8bn for the 2018/19 tax year.  And due to this, your government is talking of revising the budget.  That is moving the goalposts, and it fools no-one.  And how has that deficit been brought down?  By swingeing cuts in public spending, which has seen local authorities across the UK, the NHS and the police in England suffer as a result.  London can barely get through a weekend without a stabbing, and you pretend that has nothing to do with government cuts to the police budgets.

The national debt is falling?  Then perhaps you would like to explain how it recently surpassed the £2 Trillion mark, £2,17 Trillion to be precise?  I can explain it; it was due to uncertainty over Brexit – uncertainty which you created.

Bringing an end to austerity?  Really?  Except in 2017 you told the 1922 committee that austerity was over.  On 3 October 2018, after dancing onto the stage at the Conservative Party conference, you gave a speech in which you declared, quote, “a decade after the financial crash, people need to know that the austerity it led to is over”.  On 28 October 2018, your then Chancellor, Phillip Hammond, stated, quote, “hard work is paying off and the age of austerity is coming to an end”.  In January 2019 you again reiterated that austerity was at an end.  Which is it?

“My focus has been on ensuring that the good jobs of the future will be created in communities across the whole country, not just in London and the southeast, through our Modern Industrial Strategy.  We have helped more people than ever enjoy the security of a job.”

There is no security of a job.  Go and have a look at the job boards.  Most of the jobs on offer are poorly-paid agency contracts, which are mostly temporary, many are part-time, and some are on zero hours contracts.  By using agencies, employers can get around the usual safeguards which ensure job security and workers rights.

“We are building more homes and helping first-time buyers onto the housing ladder — so young people can enjoy the opportunities their parents did.”

The Help to Buy scheme came not out of any caring initiative, but was a mark of desperation out of pure necessity when your government was shamed into action by a shocking housing shortage, caused by Margaret Thatcher’s failed “right to buy” policy.  Your government and past Tory – and Labour – administrations failed to build new homes, or to address the problem of rich absentee landlords snapping up properties, then letting them out at rents which few could afford.  This has been a particular problem in London, where entire communities have been completely forced out of the city, while the rich have moved into their place.  So much so that there are now calls from white, middle-class residents in Notting Hill suggesting that organisers take the Notting Hill Carnival elsewhere.

“And we are protecting the environment, eliminating plastic waste, tackling climate change and improving air quality.  This is what a decent, moderate and patriotic Conservative government, on the common ground of British politics, can achieve, even as we tackle the biggest peacetime challenge any government has faced.”

That would be under legislation which was ruled by, ermm, the European Union, which you have been trying so hard to get the UK out of.

And of course under the Kyoto Accord of 1992, long, long before you were even in government, let alone Prime Minister.  Every country which signed the Kyoto Agreement has to reduce carbon emissions and carry out other environmental improvements, so quit trying to tell us that you and your government came up with it.

And actually, England is trailing behind the world in environmental issues.  According to the European Environmental Bureau, England is 18^th in the world league table on recycling.  Meanwhile, a rise in VAT on solar panels, introduced by your government, has made installing them impractical for many home owners.  Compare that to Scotland where most or our electricity is now produced by renewables, and we are already ahead of our carbon reduction targets.

“I know that the Conservative Party can renew itself in the years ahead, that we can deliver Brexit and serve the British people with policies inspired by our values: security, freedom and opportunity.  Those values have guided me throughout my career.”

Actually, Brexit may be the complete undoing of the Conservative Party.  The divisions which it has driven, and with members defecting to other parties, may yet prove terminal to the Conservative Party.  As to security, there have been a spate of terrorist attacks in England under your premiership, which police were powerless to stop.  Many freedoms have been curtailed under your watch both as Home Secretary and Prime Minister, and your own government’s Online Harms White Paper, in openly seeking to restrict “behaviours which are harmful but not necessarily illegal” is little more than an Orwellian ‘thought police’, which will intrude upon and affect the perfectly legal online behaviours of millions.  As to opportunity, what opportunity?  The opportunity to work in temporary, dead-end, poorly-paid, agency contracts, and keep doing so until you are 70 years old, or drop dead doing so?  Certainly don’t look to better yourself in England, because with crippling tuition fees, there is little incentive to go to university.  And even if one does, where are the jobs befitting those graduations?  I do not doubt that those values have guided you, because when you talk of “security, freedom and opportunity”, it seems to me it is purely your own you are thinking of.

”But the unique privilege of this office is to use this platform to give a voice to the voiceless, to fight the burning injustices that still scar our society.  That is why I put proper funding for mental health at the heart of our NHS long-term plan.”

Except you did not.  Far from it, you have continually cut back funding in mental health in England.  The number of beds allocated to mental health patients dropped by 30% in 2018, while mental health nurses dropped by 15%.  And in the same period, 400,000 young people in England were referred for mental health issues.  These figures all have one common factor behind them; the continuing austerity and cutbacks imposed on the NHS, communities, and young people by your government were a huge contributory factor.  You only started pouring money into mental health after these things were pointed out to you.  So far from being a “long-term plan”, it is a kneejerk reaction.  And given you made this statement just a week after the UK Mental Health Awareness Week, that was another low and cynical move.

“It is why I am ending the post code lottery for survivors of domestic abuse.  It is why the Race Disparity Audit and gender pay reporting are shining a light on inequality, so it has nowhere to hide.”

You, in fact created the ‘post code lottery for survivors of domestic abuse’ during your tenure as Home Secretary, and you have done nothing to address until recently as Prime Minister.  Absolutely the same can be said of race disparity and the gender pay gap.  You have had 10 years to sort things out that you and you alone were largely responsible for creating, or at least did nothing to address before, and it is only now, that your popularity is in the bin, that you are pretending to care.

“And it is why I set up the independent public inquiry into the tragedy at Grenfell Tower — to search for the truth, so nothing like it can ever happen again, and so the people who lost their lives that night are never forgotten.”

This has got to be the lowest blow of them all.  Whoever had been Prime Minister, there would always have been some sort of investigation into the causes of the Grenfell Tower fire, whether that be by inquiry or inquest.  And in fact, you created the independent public inquiry into it only after London Mayor Sadiq Khan and others pressed you to do so.  But let us just look at Grenfell Tower.  Here was a tower block filled with some of the poorest and most vulnerable in UK society; the unemployed, refugees, former homeless, single mums – all of whom had suffered at the hands of your government’s policies, placed in a dangerous slum dwelling, which was surrounded by the lavish apartment blocks of the rich and privileged.  Grenfell was a disaster waiting to happen, and Kensington and Chelsea Council – ran by your party, the Conservatives – did nothing to address that.

Meanwhile, while you make sanctimonious statements about remembering the dead, I notice you say nothing of the survivors, who two years later still suffer the trauma of that terrible fire, 96 of whom are still living in temporary flats, hotels, serviced apartments, and some even ‘couch-surfing’ with friends.  This in addition to those who were offered accommodation which was completely unsuitable, including one person offered a house which was in desperate need of repair, a disabled person who was offered an upstairs apartment without a lift, and one person who is suffering PTSD from the fire, and was offered an upper storey apartment in another tower block.  Your words are empty.  Your party created the circumstances which made the Grenfell Tower fire not only possible, but inevitable, and which have done nothing to address since, except your inquiry attempting to place the blame on the brave firefighters who tried their best to fight an impossible situation that night.

“Because this country is a Union.  Not just a family of four nations.  But a union of people — all of us.  Whatever our background, the colour of our skin, or who we love.  We stand together.  And together we have a great future.  Our politics may be under strain, but there is so much that is good about this country. So much to be proud of. So much to be optimistic about."

The Union of nations you claim to care so much about, may well be undone, by your very own hands.  Your continued unwillingness to recognise the wishes of over 60% of the Scottish electorate to stay in the EU, and to snub the First Minister of Scotland in Brexit talks, has already lead to a backlash which may yet see Scotland leaving the Union.  Likewise, your ignorance of the NI backstop is leading people in the province to question whether a united Ireland may be the answer.  The EU referendum itself has sown the seeds of division which has seen many vicious attacks upon people for their ethnic background, and the colour of their skin.  Your own government’s policies have seen many torn from their communities and deported.  As to “who we love”, may I remind you that in your political career you supported Section 28, voted against adoption by same-sex couples, and opposed equal age of consent?

“I will shortly leave the job that it has been the honour of my life to hold — the second female prime minister but certainly not the last.”

Indeed, I certainly hope not.  Nicola Sturgeon has shown just how effective a woman leader can be.  However, I remember the last woman Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, all too well.  Having survived her misrule, I never thought there could ever be a worse Prime Minister.  But Thatcher was a saint compared to you, the pound shop Thatcher.  It is no lie that you have done much more damage to some of the most vulnerable in UK society in only 3 short years than Thatcher managed to do in 11 years.  Thatcher was a complete bastard, but she had an idea of what she was doing.  You have been completely out of your depth, and wholly incompetent at your job – and the poorest of the poor have suffered for that incompetence.  Great leadership comes from ability to do the job, not from gender.

”I do so with no ill will, but with enormous and enduring gratitude to have had the opportunity to serve the country I love (sobs).”

Yeah?  Well, while you claim to have no ill will, I have plenty.  So, dry your eyes.

I will save my tears for the children who will go to bed hungry tonight.  For the severely disabled, and those desperately and even terminally ill who have benefits cut, because they have been deemed fit for work.  For those who faced with benefit cuts or just plain austerity could go no further, and took their own lives.  For the 1.2 million – including some working but on low wages – who have to rely on handouts from food banks.  For the 320,000 homeless who will be sleeping on the streets, in graveyards, in shelters, or couch-surfing tonight.  For every person of an ethnic or racial minority who lives daily with the threat of violence.  For the families and friends of yet another young person stabbed to death.  For those torn from their families, friends, and communities and deported from the country they have come to call home.  And for the millions of other lives that your disastrous tenure as Prime Minister has destroyed.

These too are people of the UK.  You don’t love them; you care absolutely nothing for them, you have shown them utter contempt, and you certainly were not weeping for them.

Your tears were for yourself, and no-one else.  I am not at all impressed, and I shed absolutely no tears for you.