Theresa May was broken by Brexit, it is likely to break her successor too

Theresa May was broken by Brexit, it is likely to break her successor too

Theresa May goes back into Number 10 after her emotional resignation speech

It has been a political career defined by not showing emotion.

Theresa May was a prime minister nicknamed "the Maybot" for her robotic and disengaged public appearances.

And yet, after 20 years on the political frontline, she ended her career in the most human of ways: overwhelmed and breaking into tears as she said goodbye to the job she loved.

After fronting it out for so long as a tough, resilient, immovable leader, sight of her vulnerability and humanity on the steps of Number 10 showed a very different prime minister than we have perhaps come to know.

I'm told that as she walked back into Number 10, her staff, in tears to match her own, had a laugh as the prime minister was forced to walk around a sedentary Larry the cat who refused to make way for his departing owner.


Meanwhile, James Brokenshire, an old political friend who had served with her at the Home Office, told me how she'd phoned him to tell her he was standing down at breakfast, just before she met Sir Graham Brady in Number 10.

He was on his way to an advice surgery in his constituency when he took the call.

Theresa May broke down in tears after announcing her exit

The prime minster told him to carry on doing that rather than come to Downing Street to support her.

"She said 'Well that's important, what's important is actually getting on... doing the job', and I suppose that sums up who she is. Because you see the work she does in her constituency, that is just so important to her."

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Others in her cabinet were informed by telephone that she was about to resign as she held her meeting with Sir Graham.

Her final surrender came after a drawn-out fight with her cabinet and her party.

Mrs May ignored political convention, battling through a confidence vote in her leadership; through three parliamentary defeats of her key Brexit legislation; and two extensions to Brexit.

Any one of those things would be enough to bring a prime minister down but she defied political gravity.

But the combination of the two Brexit extensions, the cross-party talks with Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and the attempt to bring back her deal a fourth time with the prospect of a second referendum attached proved too much even for her.

And so came the end of May.

Hers has been one of the shortest tenures of any post-war prime minister and her government has passed less legislation that any other in the last three decades, consumed and paralysed in equal measure by Brexit.

It is a tenure that will be chalked up as a failure, and she will no doubt be cast by many as the villain in this mess.

You can see the missteps along the way. Mrs May drew her Brexit red lines - no single market, no customs union, no freedom of movement, or EU court jurisdiction in the UK - too early and rigidly.

She was intransigent and unpersuasive and too slow to adjust the political realities of a minority government. She was only ever going to get Brexit across the line on the back of some sort of cross-party compromise. But she left those talks far too late.

That leadership vacuum only served to calcify arch Brexiteer and arch Remainer positions as both sides dug their trenches deeper rather than trying to move on to common ground.

But she was also dealt a dire hand. She never really had the numbers to pass a Brexit deal through parliament, either before her snap election or after it.

David Cameron not only left her with a country reeling from a divisive referendum, but also left her with a majority of just 12 MPs in 2016. She lost her final Brexit deal by 58 votes. Thirty four Conservatives voted against her deal.

Mrs May also faced a difficult opposition. In Jeremy Corbyn, she has the most tribal of Labour leaders since Michael Foot; the Scottish first minister Nicola Sturgeon set on using Brexit as a vehicle to launch an independence campaign; and a Liberal Democrat party which would never be shifted from its position of remain.

Mark Rutte, the Dutch prime minister and one of Mrs May's true allies in Europe, described her as "courageous" as he spoke for the first time about her imminent resignation.

"The problem is not Theresa May... the problem is the situation to work within the realities of the Good Friday Agreement and the UK not wanting to stay members of the customs union and not wanting to stay as members of the internal market and all those red lines, it was almost impossible to come up with something that could command a majority in the House of Commons."

David Cameron says he feels 'desperately sorry' for Theresa May

And while people are quick to judge her as the worst prime minister ever - see my previous column - I would caution about what could come next.

Allies of the prime minister tell me that she blocked a "no-deal" Brexit because of the implications it could have for the United Kingdom and the break up of the union. As the prime minister of the Conservative Party and Unionist Party, Mrs May wouldn't do anything that might hastened the calls for a border poll.

Because while Mrs May got there late in the day, the principle of compromise that she spoke of is the only route through the Brexit impasse. It is about to be in even shorter supply under a new Conservative prime minister.

In the imminent race to replace Theresa May, the party will polarise further into the no-deal versus deal camps. And whoever wants to win the leadership knows only too well that supporting a hard Brexit is the closest route to Tory members' hearts.

Image: From top left to bottom right: Matt Hancock, Liz Truss, Boris Johnson, Andrea Leadsom, Rory Stewart, Esther McVey, Michael Gove, Sajid Javid could all run to be the next prime minister

As one MP said to me in the hours after Mrs May announced she was standing down as leader on 7 June: "Nothing changes. Not in Europe. Not mathematically in parliament. The only thing which will happen now is an election. Which will change nothing."

Another Conservative prime minister brought down by Europe, the wings of the party remain as irreconcilable as ever. Her Tory hardliners will only accept a "clean Brexit".

Parliament will not accept a no-deal Brexit. If the future prime minister tries to take the UK out with no-deal on 31 October, will parliament try to collapse the government?

If the new prime minister chooses to delay Brexit further, will "spartan" Brexiteers on their own benches try to do the same?

So we end the month of May with the prime minister poised to stand down. But Brexit is a problem delayed not resolved. And the battle to come will be bloodier still.