When Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May stepped out onto Downing Street on April 18 to call a snap election for June 8, no one expected it. Since becoming prime minister in July 2016 after David Cameron’s sudden resignation, she had made clear, on six separate occasions, that she would not call one. It was obvious, she insisted, that Britain’s departure from the European Union required stability, a spell free from the demands and distractions of an election campaign when “the will of the British people” could be fulfilled. [...]
Since taking office 10 months ago, May has forged her name as a fearsome, authoritative leader, adored by the tabloids for taking on the Brexit beacon with glee—“Brexit means Brexit,” she famously declared. She pandered to an older sense of British identity, played up the Margaret Thatcher comparisons, and drove the party to the right, hoovering up UKIP support in the process. These weren’t just tactics: The cheap xenophobia seemed to come naturally. “If you believe you’re a citizen of the world, you’re a citizen of nowhere,” she said to cheers. Nigel Farage and Marine Le Pen accused her of stealing their ideas. But despite her divisive drive to cut immigration and reject any responsibility for refugees, she was still heralded as a “unity” figure who would guide Britain through the roiling waters of EU negotiations. [...]
But then suddenly things began unravelling. And how. It started with what many saw as her first campaign policy: an absurd declaration to bring back fox-hunting, revoking a ban on foxes being devoured by dogs that eight out of 10 Brits were said to support keeping in place. Soon followed a U-turn on an unpopular manifesto pledge, dubbed the “Dementia Tax.” The plan was to make seniors pay means-tested contributions towards their own social care—not entirely unreasonable—but without any cap on how much they might have to spend. May swiftly backtracked on the latter part, vaguely alluding to the fact that a cap would be introduced. The press lapped it up: It was framed as the first time a party had reversed on a manifesto policy before an election. [...]
The beauty of May’s meaningless aphorisms is that Brexit can then be used to justify virtually anything. After initially avoiding calling an election because of Brexit, and then going ahead and calling an election because of Brexit, May now says she can’t campaign because of, well, Brexit. So when Corbyn challenged her to a televised leadership debate, hardly an unusual demand in a democracy, Theresa May said no, sneering that “he ought to be paying more attention to thinking about Brexit negotiations than appearing on television—that’s what I’m doing.”
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