Theresa May: Britain's worst Prime Minister?

The title of Britain's worst Prime Minister must have a number of contenders, but for the sake of contemporary relevance, Theresa May has few rivals in living memory to compare with. David Cameron's tenure in office ended in being defeated by his own vanity; in the EU referendum, gambling one time too many that he could predict and manipulate the political weather for his own benefit. His time in office was therefore an exemplar in the use of vain posturing and low politics that covered his own shallow sense of morality. His term as Prime Minister achieved little of real substance, except for his "austerity agenda" setting up his successor with a plethora of mounting domestic problems (economic and social), and the self-inflicted mess of Brexit.
The author has said before how Theresa May was dealt a poor hand when she succeeded, so anyone would have struggled. With hindsight, it is now painfully apparent that Theresa May was perhaps the  person in Cameron's senior cabinet least psychologically and intellectually qualified to deal with the issues at her door. She is a prime example of an utter mediocrity who has risen far above her station, and is now holding her office simply for the convenience of her party.


Useless

If the definition of the Prime Minister's role is to deal with the nation's problems and make decisions, then Theresa May is by definition failing to carry out her constitutional duties. As wonderfully satirized by John Crace, "there’s hardly a part of the country that isn’t falling apart around the prime minister’s ears as she devotes all her attention to doing nothing about Brexit" . 
Crace sums up the situation succinctly. Week by week, aspects of life in Britain take on elements of Gothic Horror: hospitals unable to cope while they also face mounting staffing problems; the education system seemingly in slow meltdown as teachers leave in droves over the ever-mounting and soul-destroying work schedule, while many private academies are facing their own financial apocalypse; some local councils now facing the very real threat of insolvency due to government-imposed austerity; an economy that provides only poverty-level work for many, leaving thousands in malnutrition and struggling to pay the bills; a housing market that works more like a Ponzi scheme for the rich, while leaving everyone else struggling to pay for ever-rising rents in (often unsafe) housing. And then there's the homelessness epidemic that is a result of much of the above.

All these problems, and countless other social issues, are going unaddressed while the Prime Minister is supposed to be dealing (but not dealing) with Brexit. While the fact that she now presides over a minority government she helped create doesn't help, this doesn't mean the government is incapable of action. On the contrary, a more pro-active and forward-thinking Prime Minister would take the opportunity to work with the opposite bench in parliament to get legislation through, in the manner of a "national government". This has happened in the past, as it is necessary for any minority government to function in a meaningful way. But she is psychologically and intellectually incapable of doing this (more on that later).
As her role in Downing Street seems to be simply to hold her party together long enough to see Brexit through - by the end of March next year - everything else becomes neglected, even critical decisions on Brexit itself. Because her party and her cabinet is irrevocably divided on Brexit and the desired outcome, May can do nothing but make pointless, superficial noises on the issue that are in reality meaningless. In this sense, she is the helpless adjudicator in an ideological coalition of incompatible ideas. If she seems to veer too close to the "softer" side of Brexit, the "hard" Brexiteers rein her back. If she veers too close to the "hard" end of the spectrum, those at the other end make their own "noises off". So far, hers is a government by procrastination and indecision, incapable of making a decision.
And because of the lack of any real decision-making, the UK may still end up leaving the EU next year without any real deal at all and no meaningful transition. The indecision is also causing the country's business leaders to seriously wonder about the future of the British economy. It's no wonder that in receiving no words to the positive from London, the EU is drawing up its own plans. The only place to get sane council on Brexit these days is in Brussels. 


Heartless

The other problem with May is that on the rare occasions she is decisive, she seems heartless.

When it comes to Brexit issues such as EU citizens rights and migration, her former role as Home Secretary seems to colour (or more accurately, tarnish) her outlook: keen to reduce immigration regardless of its human impact, she seems willing to use EU citizens as "hostages" in the negotiation, threatening to withdraw their rights after March 2019. Apart from the psychological toll this would have on the millions of Europeans in the UK, it demonstrates how little thought she has given to its real impact on millions of families. Then there are the draconian methods used by the Home Office to detain and deport EU migrants currently, effectively persecuting them for being unable to make an economic success of their life in the UK.
Apart from Brexit issues, there are the already-mentioned domestic issues that May is making worse, not only through her inept inaction, but also through her stubbornly-myopic view of politics. Her background as a provincial (insular?) Home Counties vicar's daughter seems to play a part in this, being incapable of seeing the many problems of other parts of society, except at the most superficial and prejudicial level. Margaret Thatcher seemed to have a similar problem (and with, in some ways, a similarly-provincial mindset). But Theresa May takes this lack of empathy to a different level of indifference: while Thatcher's indifference might have been explained by a form of intellectual detachment, May's indifference seems to come from a more deep-seated psychological insecurity, where she dresses up her own sense of inadequacy in an unbending persona of rigid orthodoxy. This also explains why her instincts are reactionary and authoritarian.
This also further explains why she struggles to look human at times, and why she struggles to understand the problems of people she can't relate to. In times like this, when under attack for her perceived lack of humanity, her instinct is to become psychologically abusive and mean-spirited. As seen in her recent attacks on Jeremy Corbyn at PMQs, she laid into the NHS problems in "Labour Wales" and the policing problems in "Labour London", even though her government is ultimately responsible for cutting the funding to both.


Brainless

Another form of May's failure is her long record of incompetence and political short-termism.

The earlier example of May's commitment to restricting the rights of EU citizens in Britain after March 2019 is also an example of her insular thinking: by restricting the rights of Europeans in Britain, it forces the EU to restrict the rights for Brits living and working in the EU. So May's thinking is both counter-productive and thoughtless.
This pattern continues to her stubborn insistence on Britain leaving the single market and the customs union, which anyone with a semblance of understanding of the practicalities would know it meant the British economy quickly falling apart without any replacement systems in place. But again, apart from her failure to grasp even the basics on many issues, from the economy to social issues, she is only able to think one step at a time, incapable of longer-term or three-dimensional thinking.
This form of political short-termism has plagued government and the economy for years, but Theresa May seems to encapsulate the problem completely. Her job is to keep her party in government long enough to complete Brexit; what happens to the country in the meantime or afterwards seems irrelevant.
Incapable of thinking two steps ahead of the game, she is constantly being manipulated into doing whatever the person with the loudest voice at that moment (usually a Brexiteer) has to say. As said earlier, her minority government was her own fault, but as she is intellectually incapable of any forward thinking, it also means she is incapable of knowing how to work with the opposition to get anything done in parliament. Even on Brexit, the one thing she is meant to be focused on, she is incapable of getting opposing sides to work together and reach a sane compromise. As far as she is concerned, the opposition is the opposition, and working with them, even in the national interest, would be anathema. Better that the country go to the dogs than let the opposition get a sniff of power, so it would appear.

For all these reasons, Theresa May makes a strong case for Britain's worst Prime Minister. The fact that she is running the country (at least on paper) during the most diplomatically-intractable time the country has had since the Second World War, which will have long-term consequences for the country's future, is appalling.