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On May and her record: it is too easily forgotten that she presented herself, as party chair in opposition, as an uber-moderniser: willing to speak honestly about the Tories' 'nasty party' image and the shocking lack of diversity in its ranks. (1)
But she came to believe that the modernisation agenda was shot through with a liberalism that was blind to the concerns of millions of voters. And at the Home Office she become positively fixated by immigration - a fixation that spread through....(2)
....the Tory bloodstream and shaped the contours of the 2016 referendum campaign (even though she was - notionally at least - a Remainer). By the time she became Prime Minister she was converted to the end of EU free movement and what became...(2)
...the 'citizen of nowhere' theme. Though her 'burning injustices' speech on the steps of Downing Street promised much, it was never really compatible with this fixation over border control. Interestingly, her government was utterly uninterested (4)
...in Louise Casey's excellent plan for integration. It was immigration that obsessed her. And this obsession did terrible damage to our political culture, encouraging the misapprehension that immigration cuts would improve voters' quality of life (5).
She set the stage for a terrible stand off between culture (cut immigration) and prosperity (maintain links with the EU so we can fund public services). There was - and is - no easy resolution to this dilemma because it forces a nation to ask...(6)
...whether is regards cultural uniformity (whatever that is) as a higher priority to economic growth. And this question was never close to being answered during her premiership. It's nothing like good news that her likely successor (7)
...believes so strongly in having his cake and eating it. For all the talk of the 17.4 million and the implementation of the referendum result, we are no closer to deciding what that actually means. Not much of a legacy. ENDS
