Thread by @lunaperla

Today is possibly .@theresa_may's last day as PM, if .@BorisJohnson can command a majority (which is in some doubt...)

So it's a great opportunity to look back at some of the *highlights* of Mrs May's premiership in memes👇

13 JUL 2016: May was appointed as PM and named her Cabinet shortly thereafter, surprising many by giving 3 of the top #Brexit-related jobs to arch-brexiters Boris Johnson, David Davis & Liam Fox. Sheer folly, or genius in making them own what they'd sold? Sadly, the former😢
/1.

5 OCT 2016: With such a narrow result, the country could be forgiven for expecting May to propose a consensual solution, as Norway PM Erna Solberg had done in a similar situation. Most Remainers would've accepted #Norway.

May's #CitizensOfNowhere speech crushed all hope.
/2.

2 NOV 2016: May's gaffe-proned* Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson, said Britain will make a “titanic success of Brexit” and compared himself to the dog strangled by Michael Heseltine.

Oh dear.🙄

*(I'm being polite; I mean 'major liability')
/3.

17 JAN 2017: May's Lancaster House speech stunned us all with its profusion of red lines. Who knew we'd voted for hard #Brexit? We all did, apparently. It became politically incorrect to point out nobody could possibly have known what we'd voted for as it wasn't specified.
/4.

13 MAR 2017: Debate over triggering #Article50 raged, thx to Gina Miller fighting a court case to give Parliament a say. I say 'debate', it was more like capitulation as MP after MP said they knew #Brexit was bad for UK, but wld vote for it anyway.

This was my very 1st meme!
/5.

18 APR 2017: I was on a Skype with the Director of .@postcards_48 discussing the progress of the crowdfunder for our film, when May popped out of N°10 to announce a snap GE (after denying there would be one 9x)...that set the hares running. CRUSH the Saboteurs, said the Mail.
/6.

APR/MAY/JUN 2016: Election guru Sir Lynton Crosby made the Tory campaign all about May. But the public soon smelt a rat. She was ferried from closed set to closed set, but even in front of a small, select audience she was awkward. Then came the manifesto meltdown...
/7.

8 JUN 2017: As significant numbers of Remainers combined to vote tactically for whichever candidate was most likely to defeat a Tory, May lost her majority.
/8.

JUN 2017: Enter the #DUP...It dragged on, but Gavin Williamson eventually did a deal, costing the UK taxpayer £1bn - £100,000,000 for every DUP MP!

This was the moment #SODEM was born. Furious about the DUP deal, Steve Bray shut up shop, packed his bags & took off to London.
/9.

14 JUN 2017: The Grenfell Tower fire.

May's handling of the tragedy was lamentable.

[No meme]

/10.

26 JUN 2017: Negotiations with the EU began. The EU had published position papers and made them public weeks in advance. David Davis adopted a more "the dog ate my homework" lackadaisical style, but spun it by saying the Govt had to keep its cards close to its chest.🙄
/11.

13 JUL 2017: Trouble in #Brexit *paradise*. Sir Amyas Morse, National Audit Office Comptroller & Auditor General, said May’s Govt had left hopes of a successful Brexit at risk of falling apart “like a chocolate orange”. (Never mind that "successful Brexit" is a oxymoron)
/12.

22 JUL 2017: Theresa May's Florence Speech. More unicorns 🦄🦄🦄

By now people were increasingly wondering why, if Brexit was such a good idea, the PM and her ministers had to continue to tell such outrageous lies about it.
/13.

4 OCT 2017: Knives were out for May. Johnson was proving to be a disloyal turd. Others were on manoeuvres against her too. She needed to make a great speech at conference, but failed. She had a cough & male MPs didn't move a muscle as a prankster approached her with a P45.
/14.

OCT 2017: On a day when the country was busy with other news, May snuck out the announcement that there would be no money available to put sprinklers in buildings like #GrenfellTower, as had been proposed after the tragedy. #ShameOnYou #ToryWeasels
/15.

13 DEC 2017: Getting the Govt to agree to the principle of giving Parliament a meaningful vote on any deal to leave the EU was like pulling teeth.

Calls for a #FinalSay were growing ever louder, but May was implacably resolved against it.
/16.

4 FEB 2018: Meanwhile the country went to the dogs. #Brexit coupled with May's disdain for EU27 citizens (& UK citizens in EU), whom she used as bargaining chips, gave permission for every racist in the country to crawl out of the woodwork... May put her hypocrisy on display
/17.

FEB 2018: We were left reeling by revelations that #CambridgeAnalytica had practised military-grade psy ops on ~7mn carefully targeted voters to convince them to vote #Leave, and that the UK had been used as a petri-dish to test dark tactics for the US Presidential election.
/18.

FEB 2017: #Brexit, now clearly barely democratic, let alone the "will of the people", was going from bad to disastrous. It truly was titanic, but not in a good way. Govt obfuscated, told worse lies than during the Ref campaign and talked to the public in meaningless slogans.
/19.

5 MAR 2018: The Govt still hadn't got beyond "#Brexit means #Brexit", when May's team engineered a photo-op that appeared to be sending the message that she was being held hostage by the #ERG. *Bricksit means Bricksit*
/20.

12 MAR 18: May formally accused Russia of being behind the Skripal poisoning in #Salisbury on March 4th. Governments across the EU & US expelled Russian spies in a show of solidarity. Putin didn't mind, just as long as May delivered his foreign policy: #Brexit.
/21.

APRIL 2018: The #Windrush scandal broke and the cruelty of #HostileEnvironment + "deport 1st, appeal later" policies initiated by May when Home Secretary was revealed. The public was incensed. Somebody had to go. Amber Rudd took the bullet for her boss. Javid proved as bad.
/22.

3 MAY 2018: Once again Remainers managed to score some upsets in the Local Elections through tactical voting. The #LibDems were on the rise...
/23.

4 MAY 2018: A member of #UKIP, increasingly a joke of a party, compared it to *the Black Death*, blissfully unaware of how such a comparison was likely to be received. Due to kipper entryism, It meant the Tory Party was the Black Death by association...
/24.

JUN 2018: In a vain attempt to get public and party back onside (if they ever had been), May came up with some b*ll*cks about a #BrexitDividend. It was desperate stuff. The small print revealed it would be paid for by a tax rise. Kuenssberg tried to spin it, but to no avail.
/25.

JUN 2018: Things started to get interesting. Tory Rebels, led by Dominic Grieve, insisted May show Parliament more respect. After all, hadn't #Brexit been about our Parliament *taking back control*? May made a promise. Grieve backed down. She betrayed him. A lesson to all.
/26.

6 JUL 2018: Govt hid the true impact of #Brexit by lying, issuing gag orders & accusing sensible risk assessments by think tanks of whipping up #projectfear. In Dec 2017 David Davis had narrowly escaped a motion of contempt. Yet some info was getting into the public domain.
/27.

6 JUL 2018: then came the madness of Chequers. May made the bizarre & petty announcement that anyone who resigned would immediately relinquish their car, walk up the drive & get a taxi. So Davis & Johnson left it until they got home...So much for making them to own #Brexit.
/28.

17 JUL 2018: the Electoral Commission broke the news that #VoteLeaveBrokeTheLaw & several cases would be referred to the police.

Together with the #CambridgeAnalytica scandal this made the #EUref result unsound. May didn't care. Cons were no longer the party of law&order.
/29.

24 JUL 2018: it was becoming clear from the behaviour of lead Brexiters that #Brexit wasn't all it was cracked up to be. Some were getting EU passports to continue to enjoy EU benefits, others were moving to tax havens, or setting up businesses there. Rees-Mogg chose Dublin.
/30.

SEP 2018: May came out fighting against another ref, claiming it'd take us back to square 1. She'd obviously been rattled by the #PeoplesVote march on June 23rd when 100,000 people had taken to the streets of London to protest. Despite poor media coverage, news of it spread.
/31.

27 SEP 2018: the more May repeated her "no deal is better than a bad deal" mantra (it really isn't, in this case), the more we seemed to accelerate towards that eventuality. She appointed a Food Supplies Minister. We'd come a long way. From sunlit uplands to food rationing.
/32.

OCT 2018: May did something smart. She'd been mocked for her robotic dancing on a trip in Africa. At conference she won the crowd with self-deprecation, dancing onto the stage to Abba's #DancingQueen. It was the high-point of her premiership. #Brexit was still crap though.
/33.

OCT 2018: While at conference, May appeared on the #Marr show, oblivious to the optics of her sitting there with the government's estimates of how damaging various #Brexit scenarios would be.
/34.

10 OCT 2018: returning from conference May appointed a Minister of Suicide Prevention. A sharp rise in suicide due to #Brexit has been forecast. Particularly at risk are the 5m families being used as bargaining chips (EU27inUK & UKinEU27) whose lives have been made a misery.
/35.

19 NOV 2018: May caused widespread outrage as she attacked EU27 citizens settled in the UK again, labelling them as #Queuejumpers.

(She'd probably would have insulted the Brits in EU27 too, only she constantly forgot they existed.)
/36.

(Yeah, I know, that previous meme is an anachronism. Never mind. It was the best one to illustrate the point.)

25 NOV 2018: May finally agreed an EUWA with the EU, or so she thought...

/37.

4 Dec 2018: Arlene Foster humiliated Theresa May, and with her, the entire UK. In the middle of a lunch with Jean-Claude Juncker to celebrate having reached agreement, May received a phone call. Foster was not a happy bunny... May was forced to back-track.
/38.

10 DEC 2018: The #ERG joined Foster in excoriating May's EUWA. Mogg & Johnson declared it made us a vassal state. Remainers lamented it meant UK had no voice, no vote, no veto. The public opposed it - one poll showed 92% of us rejecting it.

May pulled *meaningful vote* #MV1
/39.

11 DEC 2018: MPs on all sides of the House were furious, but none more so than the #ERG. Johnson's PPS, Conor Burns, launched a campaign for a vote of #NoConfidence in May. It went off half cocked.

When it came to it, Cons were loathe to act against their PM or their party.
/40.

12 DEC 2018: May was throwing taxpayers' £ at selling her non-deal to the public in one of the most dishonest marketing campaigns ever (saying it gave the same benefits as membership—it didn't), when Corbyn challenged her to debate it. They couldn't agree format, so no dice.
/41.

14 DEC 2018: May lost her temper in Brussels when she took a comment Jean Claude Juncker made about the UK Govt's #Brexit plans being "nebulous" personally.

Vast swathes of the UK population were by now in agreement.
/42.

DEC 2018: #Brexit had been absorbing almost all of the Govt's bandwidth. In the coming winter crisis, people would die in #NHS corridors because taxpayers' £ had been diverted from public services to pay for it. The homeless figures showed what a lousy job Govt was doing.
/43.

24 DEC2018: To ruin Christmas for everyone, May hung the doom of #NoDealBrexit over our heads and stepped up 'no deal' preparations.

Enter #FailingGrayling. He signed a contract with a ferry company that had no ferries, no track record & nicked its T&Cs from a pizza shop.
/44.

APRÈS-NOËL 2018: #Brexit was a clear & present danger, but also a farce. The dock where Seaborne Freight intended to land their non-existent ferries was out of commission & needed a £200m dredging operation. May had survived a VNC, but everyone wanted to see the back of her.
/45.

3 JAN 2019: May decided to start the year as she meant to go on, and told the public to prepare for #NoDealBrexit (NDB). Sadly, in his brief spell as #Brexit Secretary, Raab had discouraged people from heeding the Govt's NDB advice.The cult of NDB was on the rise.
/46.

7 JAN 2019: #FailingGrayling struck again. The whole world was laughing at us, as he enacted his very own "Dad's Army" episode — *Operation stack*, a simulation of a traffic jam with 89 lorries (a tiny fraction of what passes through #Dover each day).
/47.

14 JAN 2019: support for #PeoplesVote was snowballing. It offered a way for May to save face & break the #Brexit impasse, but she refused, claiming another Ref would be "catastrophic for #Democracy" (as if monumental constitutional change based on a corrupt ref wasn't!)
/48.

15 JAN 2019: perhaps the nadir of May's premiership? Hard to say for certain, as there were so many low points.

Her #EUWA was finally put before the Commons for meaningful vote #MV1 and lost by 230 votes, the biggest defeat in history.

Would she listen now?Would she heck!
/49.

14 FEB 2019: Having ruined Christmas by hanging the doom of #NoDealBrexit over our heads, May announced she planned to ruin Valentine's Day too, by holding #MV2.

In the event, nobody was showing her the love, she still didn't have the numbers and so pulled the vote again.
/50.

FEB 2019: #NoDealBrexit preparation was in full flow. Reports and company earnings risk warnings seeped into the public domain.

Hancock was the world's biggest buyer of fridges to stockpile medicines, but not all meds can be stockpiled, so #NHS bought extra body bags.
/51.

FEB 2019: Despite gagging orders & comfort letters, car makers announced plant closures. "Nuffin to do with #Brexit. It's diesel, innit?" said Brexiters. Car makers played ball & agreed it was due to global issues in the UK press, but said #Brexit was a factor in home press.
/52.

FEB 2019: Farmers had also discovered what #Brexit really meant. In a #NoDealBrexit scenario, 9mn lambs alone would have to be put down - the last outbreak of foot'n'mouth disease had killed 6mn animals of all kind.

#Brexit: more deadly than foot'n'mouth disease.
/53.

FEB 2019: apparently May secretly decided against #NoDealBrexit at this time. It wasn't the risk to people's lives, the cruelty to animals or the threat to business, but rather the near certainty that the Union of the UK would not survive NDB.
/54.

21 FEB 2019: Tired of rape threats, death threats and their party's failure to do anything about Kipper entryism which was radicalising local Conservative associations, three MPs left the party.

May's miniscule majority was shrinking...
/55.

12 MAR 2019: 'Plan B' was the exact same #EUWA, but with a few more warm words in the non-binding political declaration.

#MV2 saw another thumping defeat, this time by 149 votes. Now May could boast the record for the largest + 4th largest defeat in parliamentary history.
/56.

18 MAR 2019: Undeterred, May announced she'd bring the #EUWA back a 3rd time.

Not so fast, said Speaker Bercow. Your namesake, Erskine May, has something to say about that. To protect Parliament from Tyranny, Govt cannot bring back the same Bill more than once in a session.
/57.

20 MAR 2019: A small group of us were busy pushing a petition to #RevokeArticle50 when something extraordinary happened: May gave a speech, blaming MPs for her lousy #EUWA not being something they felt they could sign the country up to. Suddenly, the petition took off...
/58.

29 MAR 2019: the day we were supposed to leave the EU, but didn't. The world didn't end. Nobody died. Nobody lost their business. Nobody lost their future. There were a few grumpy thugs outside Parliament, but that was it. Inside, May had imposed a 3-line whip for #MV3.
/59.

30 MAR 2019: After yet another humiliating defeat for May in #MV3, the first day of still being in the EU. #Bliss.

#Brexit was down, but not out, and in the following rounds we were going to have to deal with bonkers amounts of cognitive dissonance...
/60.

31 MAR 2019: The #RevokeArticle50 petition reached 6mn signatures. SIX MILLION.

Brexiters tried to downplay it, but it was noticed by governments around the world, even if ours was studiously ignoring it. A similar petition for #NoDealBrexit only garnered 300k signatures.
/61.

APR 2019: May plotted to bring her 3x-rejected #EUWA back a 4th time.

People wondered why it was democratic to put the same *deal* to MPs 4x in as many months & expect them to change their minds, but not allow us to change our minds & have another vote after THREE YEARS?
/62.

2 APR 2019: May ditched #MV4 & instead reached out to the Opposition. Luckily she waited a day to do this, otherwise we'd all've thought it was an elaborate prank.

We feared a stitch up, but they were unlikely to agree, as some Tory MPs were behaving as if they had rabies.
/63.

9 APR 2019: It was reported the average age at which people switch to voting #Tory had risen to 51yrs from 47yrs during GE2017.

Tory MPs wept & wailed. "We must do more to attract the youth vote!" But they all refused to countenance the one thing that'd do that: #StopBrexit
/64.

3 MAY 2019: Local Elections saw huge losses for the Cons, flat results for Labour (disappointing vs the worst Tory Govt in history) and a massive surge for progressive, pro-Remain parties.

May said the swing to Remain was evidence people just wanted to get on with #Brexit🙄
/65.

17 MAY 2019: Up until the last moment, May was saying #EUElections2019 wouldn't take place. There was no proper campaign to explain registration, which is complicated for EU27citizens voting here. Even those who completed the right forms in time were #DeniedMyVote. #Disgrace
/66.

21 MAY 2019: May gave a delusional "New #Brexit Deal" speech."Our young people will enjoy opportunities in the future that my generation could have never dreamed of." How could she say that when her generation is stripping our youth of rights & opportunities they enjoyed?😡
/67.

23 MAY 2019: In the #EUElections2019, BXP took all of UKIP's seats + 4 Tory & 1 Labour seat. Meanwhile #LibDems gained 15 and the #Greens 4 extra seats. There are now only 4 Tory MEPs (but the 2 good ones both lost their seats).

May announced her resignation on May 24th.
/68.

JUN 2019: May embarked on a quest for a legacy...

There was no #Brexit date on the ballot. May shouldn't have bowed to gungho ERG MPs & triggered #A50 without a plan. She should've held a Royal Commission to find out what people really wanted & been honest about trade-offs.
/69.

23 JUL 2019: So here we are on National-Sh1t-Hits-The-Fan Day. The unworthiest man in politics, the Great Charlatan himself, is to be our next PM, elected by 0.14% of Brits.

I used to think the one good thing about May was that she'd saved us from Johnson et al. No longer.
/End.