Abstract
Do you have any sympathy for Theresa May? Kenneth Clarke, Europhile, former holder of most of the great offices of state apart from prime minister and now Father of the House, told John Humphrys in a recent Today interview that he was indeed sympathetic. She'd made mistakes, he said, but they weren't hers. Clarke was sympathetic because the way the European Reform Group (ERG) had treated her was “a disgrace”.
Of course, Clarke is a shrewd political operator. After all, it's not that long ago that he called her “a bloody difficult woman”, and he has the ERG firmly in his sights. This whole sorry saga started when the former prime minister, David Cameron, included a binary referendum in the 2015 manifesto to stem the flow of Conservatives to UKIP.
The Remain campaign was disastrous. Journalists treated the referendum as though it were any other political campaign, complete with ubiquitous battle buses and slogans (some now infamous). Simultaneously, broadcasters fulfilled their public service obligations with the ritualised pingpong.
How could the philosopher Jurgen Habermas' theory of the informed public sphere compete with the bombast of Boris Johnson, on one side, and “grey men” on the other? It couldn't.
And we are left with the dubious democratic principle of the “will of the people”, as interpreted by David Cameron in his resignation speech. “The British people have voted to leave the European Union and their will must be respected.” With that, he scuttled off down Downing Street and in came Prime Minister Theresa May.
She promised to govern in the interests of the “just about managing” and to make a success of Brexit, parroting her mantra “leave means leave”. Since that day, her negotiating position has been mocked. Her working majority has disappeared after she called a snap election, and her mantra has morphed into a judgment on “when she will stand down?”.
Politically, this all matters, but what irritates me intensely is the way journalists and politicians have personalised Brexit by referring to the prime minister, not by her title but by her name. I'm not arguing for deference, far from it. I actually believe that we would be more informed if titles were used. So it's foreign secretary and not Boris Johnson. Let that sink in. When he casually told the foreign affairs select committee that the British citizen Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was in Tehran to train journalists, this was the foreign secretary, not just Boris being Boris.
When Prime Minister Blair told his first cabinet meeting to “just call me Tony”, the young premier shrugged off generations of tradition. It was an electorally self-confident populism that eventually backfired.
Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair had different interpretations for self-confidence and populism. I remember one of the early doorsteps I did for ITN. I called out “Mrs Thatcher” – she ignored me. The cameraman suggested I call her “prime minister”. I did. She stopped to answer my questions and I used the same formula for the chancellor, the foreign secretary and the home secretary. I had varying levels of success, but I was rarely ignored.
Constant personalisation has two consequences. One contributes to people feeling sorry for the prime minister, while the other takes away the authority of the title. Given that she failed to make good “leave means leave” on March 29, maybe she doesn't deserve any respect.
Before long Prime Minister May will go - one Conservative premier to be replaced by another. Do I have any sympathy for her? Not really. And I'm cross with her handling of Brexit. But actually, I'm far crosser with journalists who reduce a complex argument to: “Theresa May - can she survive?” “When will she go?” “Will Boris take over?”