Theresa May and Brexit Britain: A "Jekyll and Hyde" personality running a Gothic Horror show?

There are mounting reports of people within the parliamentary Conservative Party at the end of their tether with Theresa May's premiership and her "handling" of government.

The symbolism of Theresa May's tenure is not good, to say the least. She has presided over a mounting number of scandals that have cost her ministers their jobs. Meanwhile, there are ministers who ought to have been sacked, and ordinarily would have been sacked, but haven't. While the economy is meant to be at its highest level of employment for years, in every other sense, large parts the country look like they're falling apart. From councils unable to pay for basic services, massive staff cutbacks all across the public sector (including HMRC), the mechanics of the state seem to be seizing up.or disintegrating.
From the shocking rise in rough sleeping and homelessness, to the shockingly-inhumane state of much rental property, the country is simply "not fit for purpose" for much of its own population; it's a struggle to simply exist from day to day. Meanwhile, in London the property bubble is in its own unreality, where there are now more and more luxury tower blocks being built when there isn't even enough demand for what is already there. This is an economy that is in denial, where those building luxury pads didn't seem to even notice or care that the property was built not as an asset to be used but as just a speculative tool to be sold on again before it was even finished. It is another example of the "Ponzi scheme" mentality that appears to exist in the minds of many of the rich and powerful that run the country, from the now-bankrupt Carillion to London property builders who seem to be living on borrowed time.
From the symbolism of MPs refusing to leave a parliament building that is unsafe and no longer fit for purpose, to the symbolism of a "zombie" Prime Minister too paralyzed by circumstances and her own neuroses to do or change anything, an atmosphere of "Gothic Horror" seems to seep over the halls of government. And this is all without even mentioning the ongoing train-wreck that is Brexit. 


"Weak and dithering" versus "mean and dictatorial"?

Presiding over all of this is Theresa May. It could be argued that she happened to become Prime Minister at the wrong time. Her pallor and demeanor make it more apt to call her "Theresa Gray", a monochrome personality more in tune with the dour 1950s, while the various flaws in her personality give that moniker an extra-Gothic symbolism. Yes, she inherited Brexit. Yes, she inherited the same economic model as Cameron and Osborne that has seen food banks and zero-hours contracts soar. Yes, she inherited the same broken housing market with the same property bubble. And all those problems are now bit by bit coming home to roost.
However, her personality is making all of those problems worse, either through inaction, intransigence or incompetence. In some ways, it could be argued that she has something of a "split personality". A recent commentator talked about her in relation to the "Wizard Of Oz" -  being a pitiful nobody behind an imposing front - and that analogy makes a lot of sense. Her tenure at the Home Office (though in my view this antagonistic agency ought to be re-named the "Hate Office") was marked by her making a name for herself through highly-visible acts of meanness, from her poor relationship with the police, to blaming underlings for immigration and border problems, to the "Go Home" vans. This, and her loyalty to Cameron, was what kept in place until 2016.

It was her role as Home Secretary that made us see the "mean and dictatorial" side to her personality. As she was rarely put in a position that challenged this persona, by the time Cameron resigned, this all fed into an impression among some that this meant she was also "strong and stable". It was here where the Thatcher comparisons started.
This "Wizard Of Oz" perception continued up to the election campaign. Supported by Nick Timothy - known by his detractors as "Rasputin" - and Fiona Hill (who both seemed to run the show behind the scenes), it seemed to bring out the more unpleasant aspects to May's personality, running the government as a near-dictatorial personality cult. Of course, this is all very easy when someone's status is unchallenged, like May's was in the Home Office.

It was the disastrous campaign of the snap election that she called that changed all that. "Strong and stable" suddenly became "weak and wobbly". The "Wizard Of Oz" had had the curtain pulled down before him (or rather, her). Under pressure for the first real time in the public sphere, May crumpled.
Since then, May's tenure has all been about "damage limitation", to little real effect. Although she often seems to find the time to find her malevolent inner "Mrs Hyde" when at PMQs, (such as by attacking Corbyn's sincerity or mocking his style of politics, or by disseminating a barrage of linguistic nonsense to deflect from her government's failings) she is no longer really "running the country".
Thanks to her government now being reliant on the whims of Brexiteers in her party, "Brexit" is really the only thing the government is focused on; and even on that, no-one can agree. So in this sense, there isn't really a functioning "government" of the meaning of the word at all. Without a majority, and refusing on principle to compromise with the opposition, the government can not do anything, except "Brexit". And as already said, on "Brexit" no-one had the first clue what they are doing.
Because she lost the election and her party's majority, she is the "prisoner of Downing Street", hostage to the will of the personalities in the cabinet and the wider party. She has no moral authority. All that is left is the weak and dithering "Dr Jekyll" aspect to her personality: the persona with no sense of purpose, indecisive, ill at ease, insecure, paralysed by self-doubt. This is the worst type of persona to have in a national leader at any time; at this current time, with Brexit and a burgeoning host of other domestic issues that have been left to fester, it is catastrophic . When the main feeling towards her that those who meet her get is one of of pity, it is a terrible indictment on the mental state of the Prime Minister.

In this sense, the (perhaps harsh-sounding) "Jekyll and Hyde" analogy is there more to reflect the apparently contrasting manifestations of May's ego; it is not there to accuse May of being some kind of abomination. From a psychological perspective, the mean and dictatorial "Mrs Hyde" part of her personality seems to be the coldly-inhuman and narcissistic public persona she has often exhibited, and is the one that made her Prime Minister; the "Dr Jekyll" part of her seems to be the fragile and fraught "inner child" inside her, where her humanity is reflected only in the sense of it demonstrating her frailties.
In order for her to have success in her political career, then, she may have had to repress the more humane aspects of her ego; in the dog-eat-dog, masculine-led world of politics, this makes some practical sense, although it is still an indictment of a pervasively-toxic psychology within the system. Her "Nasty Party" speech early in her parliamentary career, that marked as appearing as a "compassionate conservative", was long forgotten by the time she had become an antagonistic Home Secretary. Unfortunately, her own neuroses could not hide the fact that she lacked the intellectual grasp and the sharpness of mind to tackle the (in her own words) "burning issues" of the country. As a result of this, her own incompetence as premier that had been been initially masked by a sycophantic and loyal coterie began to desert her once it was clear that she was incapable of changing. 
In this way, the much-mocked "running in wheat fields" story actually reflects a lot on May's self-image: the child who never did anything wrong becoming the Prime Minister who could not do anything right. She has become a truly tragic political figure, coming to symbolise all that is wrong with how the country is run, and everyone can see it. It's hard to know if her stubborn refusal to stand down is through some twisted sense of "duty" to her party, or through a "head-in-the-sand" inability to deal with the forlorn reality of her position.

The fact that the country feels as though it's slowly falling apart is symbolised by this Gothic mood music coming from Downing Street. If the country is slowly falling apart, it's because no-one is running the show: a powerless national leader unable to focus or make decisions on anything, reliant on a "freak show" of personalities around her. Through either lack of thought to the country or from lack of drive from within, this has become a live-action horror show. 

An ABC of immorality: From Austerity to Brexit and Carillion

Morality is a political issue, and different sides of the political spectrum tend to see what is "moral" and "immoral" in a different way. To say that something is "immoral" is to make a judgement on another person's behaviour i.e. that what someone else is doing is "wrong" and harmful.

Politics enters the equation when you answer the question: "wrong" to who? For example, conservative morality (what many would call "traditional values") teaches us that homosexuality is "immoral", while capital punishment is not. Liberal morality would consider the former to be neither moral nor immoral (as it is private behaviour and not "harmful" to anyone else), while the latter (capital punishment) would be immoral as a form of state-sanctioned murder, apart from its ineffectiveness as a deterrent. In this way, liberals would see the traditionalists' view of morality as more emotional that rational: capital punishment is "moral" because it makes traditionalists "feel good"; likewise, homosexuality is "immoral" because it makes traditionalists "feel bad". For moral traditionalists, it is not about what is better for society, but what makes them feel better themselves. It is a form of moral imposition of their perspective on the rest of society. While traditionalists always couch their morality in the perspective of what is meant to be better for everyone, the reality is that they are imposing their morality, in dictating what they think others must and must not do. This "moral imposition" has been displayed in its most sadistic form in the territories controlled by ISIS.

Traditionalists in Britain see the liberal changes in social policy, such as the legalisation of gay marriage, to be a sign of the country's immorality. It is not coincidence that there is a large overlap in the same people who oppose gay marriage also being against EU membership, and against policies such as foreign aid, while also believing that a large proportion of welfare recipients are "scroungers".
From a liberal perspective, what traditionalists see as "wrong" are nothing of the sort; meanwhile, the real problems that exist in society (such as poverty, crime and social disparity) are explained by traditionalists as being down to individual decisions; choices that people have decided to make. Those at the top of the pile are there on merit, and therefore their behaviour is automatically considered more "moral" than those at the bottom.

Put in this perspective, both liberals and traditionalists in contemporary Britain may well think that the country has entered a pit of moral lassitude and denigration, but for very different reasons.

The symbolism of decline, decay and a rotten state slowly falling to pieces seems to run through Theresa May's government.
It was the Grenfell Tower fire that seemed a physical symbol this. The fact that this fire happened due to a careless attitude towards the rules, as well as a careless attitude towards residents' safety, epitomises all that is morally wrong with modern Britain. The rules, so it seemed, were only there "for show": the many loopholes in the system in place demonstrated how little those in charge of the systems in place really cared. What mattered was the appearance of safety, the appearance of following the rules. Then there are other examples related to Grenfell, that demonstrate the sheer "fuck you" attitude prevalent in some of the elite towards those less fortunate than themselves.
The immorality of those in the elite in Britain is now becoming more and more transparent. There was a time when their views were expressed in private, knowing that they would face a rightful barrage of criticism if they were ever leaked out to the wider public; now these immoral ("non-PC") views are expressed openly. In this way, the immoral elite are lauded by some parts of the press for "saying it how it is".


"Moral regression"

The liberalisation of society and the progress towards a more moral (i.e. considerate) view of dealing with others such as minorities is now facing a strong push-back from traditionalists, who support the regressive agenda driven by UKIP. The financial crisis seems to have been the hinge point on this "moral regression". Up to that point, David Cameron had supported many aspects of the progressive social agenda of the governing Labour Party, including its stance on public spending. But the financial crisis saw him opportunistically support "austerity" as a way to differentiate his party, and create a real "moral" difference between their visions.
Put in this perspective, "austerity" was labelled as a "moral" act, as a way to restore the traditional values of society. Aside from his progressive agenda on issue like gay marriage, on the issue of "austerity" and its wider social effect, Cameron became almost puritanical in his use of this agenda as a way to remodel the morality of British society. However, the reality of this agenda, in meaning to reduce public spending as a deliberate act to change society, was to make society more unequal.

As "austerity" has now caused councils to radically scale back on the kinds of services they can provide, the day-to-day reality has meant less money to maintain street lighting, clean the streets and collect rubbish. And that's just the things that can be seen on the surface. When the same agenda is applied to the criminal justice system, the result is more crime. When it is applied to the welfare system - such as through "reforms" like Universal Credit and changes to other benefits - the result is more poverty; poverty that means that some people cannot even afford to properly eat, or afford to live in proper accommodation. The visible effect of this is a huge spike in homelessness and rough sleeping. The effect of "austerity" has been to make some parts of the country resemble a "failed state".
This is the real "moral" effect of austerity, and this agenda is pushed even further by those who support Brexit. The case for leaving the EU was put into words that made it seem like a divine cause ("Take Back Control!"); the EU was seen as an "immoral" institution that was undemocratic and destroyed Britain's ability to manage its own affairs. The EU was seen as the reason for many of Britain's ills; the reason that many parts of the UK felt ignored was (apparently) because of the EU.
This campaign was based on deceit and exploitation of people's genuine fears to further the agenda of an immoral few. After David Cameron had used his position as Prime Minister to gamble the future of the country on a party dispute, Theresa May grabbed hold of the "Brexit Agenda" to cement her own place in power.


A moral nadir?

Theresa May has presided over perhaps the most immoral British government in living memory. At a personal level, May's only quality as a politician seems to be able to disseminate, abusing the use of the English language in order to communicate garbage. All of her apparent "strengths" are merely a sign of her lack of empathy, while she sits in Downing Street as the "zombie Prime Minister". In the first phase of her premiership, the day-to-day running of her office was done by two advisers who everyone else was terrified of and who seemed to be ones really in charge. After losing the election she called, they were sacked, and her government continued only due to a billion-pound payment (in effect, a "bribe") to the DUP. As this was a payment whose effect was simply to keep May in power, the moral denigration of government had thus reached new depths.
This was going on at the same time as the Grenfell fire, while the Brexit negotiations that went on through the latter half of the year were being ran from Britain by a government whose strategy seemed designed to madden its European partners in its incoherence, double-dealing and dishonesty. Meanwhile, the government was treating parliament with contempt over its handling of Brexit.

By the time that three ministers had resigned (or been sacked) in the space of seven weeks due to various personal and professional failings, nothing seemed surprising any more. Even the fact that in the first of those resignations, the Defence Secretary was succeeded by a man who kept a pet tarantula in his parliamentary office, felt like something that was to be expected of a former Chief Whip. The "freak show" of personalities that now run the government, while parliament legislates in a building that is literally falling apart (and is a fire hazard) is emblematic of the moral collapse at the heart of the country.

Apart from the slow-motion train-wreck that is Brexit, the news about Carillion's collapse explained how broken the government-backed system of "crony capitalism" really is. This is a system that literally makes no economic sense to the government, other than to give the appearance of private sector success, while appearing to save the government money. Like with the fake system of health and safety in place at Grenfell, PFI is another "fake" system. Carillion ran its business like a Ponzi scheme, with each new contract paying for the last one. This follows the same path as has happened in other sectors, like energy and transport.
Lies and the facade of following the rules are what runs through how contemporary Britain seems to be ran. The housing market in London is supported by dirty money from Russia, the Middle East and elsewhere. The tax system is there only "for show", as the rich know all the loopholes they can use to avoid it, leaving it to the "little people" to be the ones that follow the rules. The only "moral" people, it seems, are those not rich enough to know how to exploit everyone else.

Austerity and Brexit Britain: "managed decline" or destroying the state?

The term "managed decline" when referred to Britain has been banded around for decades, ever since the end of the Second World War also marked the beginning of the end of its Empire. Joining the then EEC was about banding together with other European nations as a way to recognise the reality of Britain's diminished status as its Imperial status fell away. Since then, and in the last thirty years especially, Britain has seen a "restructuring" of the economy away from those sectors that effectively relied on its Imperial status for its survival and towards a service and finance-centred economy that was more dynamic to modern demands.
That "restructuring" is what the Tory Libertarians in government see as Britain's future. They see Britain outside the UK acting as a "Singapore-On-Thames", free from the shackles of EU regulation, free to trade with developing economies around the world; a "stripped-down" state that encourages its labour force to be forward-thinking and proactive about the country's challenges.

This vision is as delusional about the future as it is dishonest about the past. Just to name one example, the environment secretary, Michael Gove, is now talking about how the government ought to in the future grant subsidies to allow fields to return to their natural, wild state. As he claims, the CAP benefits wealthy landowners to provide perverse outcomes to agriculture. Thus, "Brexit Britain" will be about returning some of the countryside to its pre-industrial state.
This kind of policy would be considered laughable, except that this is a policy recommended by the chief minister responsible for agriculture. It is certainly true that the current rules benefit landowners; but to suggest that the answer would be for the government to pay for land to left deliberately unused is, for one, financial suicide from the government's point of view, and two, an utterly inefficient use of a commodity when the country will need to make money from all the land it can get after Britain leaves the EU. This "solution" also offers nothing on the much bigger issue of how much of the land in the UK is owned by a tiny number of people.

In other words, the government identifies a problem, then recommends the worst possible "solution". This has been a trend in this government for years. Other examples include the subsidies that the government pay to the privatised train companies (some of which are owned by foreign governments); the subsides paid to the privatised energy companies (some of which are also owned by foreign governments); the money now paid to universities by government in the form of student loans (much of which will remain unpaid) to pay for its policy of hugely-increased tuition fees. Then there are the numerous companies that the government "outsource" to in various capacities, from the justice system (prisons and detention centres), to the welfare system, and so on. These companies then almost always do the job that government did in a far more incompetent manner, because they have much tighter overheads to worry about (even with government assistance).

To pay for all this corporate largess, one solution the government came up with was "austerity". In the government's (false) narrative, the financial crisis was the result of the Labour government's overspending. Therefore, the Conservative government's main priority was to reduce government spending in any way it could. This also served the wider purpose of fitting in with the Libertarian agenda close to the heart of some in government, including those also in favour of Brexit. In this way, "austerity" was a means to an end: about permanently changing the perception in society that government was a reliable "safety net".
Cameron's idea of the "Big Society", formed prior to his conversion to the "austerity" agenda, was originally about the community helping out those in trouble, in order to help government. Instead, the "Big Society" under an "austerity" government has become a sick joke: where Food Banks are established in order to help those who cannot even afford to properly feed themselves (even those in work!), thanks to the government's own policies. In this manner, the government now praising the "Big Society" during a time of government-imposed austerity is a little like being attacked on the street, to then see the attacker later visiting the hospital where you are being treated for your injuries, in order to praise the staff for their work! The "austerity agenda" has spread into the welfare state, so that thanks to changes to disability assessment and the introduction of Universal Credit, more and more people are now unable to afford simple essentials, and some are homeless as well as starving.


A "failed state"?

In this way, aspects of Britain under the Conservative government have took on the appearance of a "failed state": where the government has effectively wiped its hands clean of whole areas of civil government and social welfare. Local governments are now deliberately starved of cash, with the result that essentials like bin collection and street lighting (without even mentioning the closing of "non-essential" things like local libraries) have been downgraded due to lack of money. Parts of the country look increasingly grubby and ill-maintained precisely because central government refuses to provide the cash. Meanwhile, the nakedly-visible increase of homelessness seen on the streets is the marker of a government that is failing its citizens.
Bear in mind again, these are conscious decisions by central government: they are choosing to do this. The money could be found if it wanted it; it simply chooses not to find it, and chooses to allow these services to wither.
In other areas such as policing and the prison service, cuts to funding have a direct consequence on public safety: the increase in violence and street crime is there for all to see, while the police state openly that certain crimes (like petty theft) will go un-investigated because they simply lack the resources. In prisons, violence is reaching levels closer to those seen in the developing world, rather than those expected for a G7 country.
Meanwhile cuts to defence also have reduced the country's ability to even properly monitor its own borders, let alone its involvement in overseas engagements. Vanity projects like the huge aircraft carriers now being put into service simply act as concrete evidence that the government is more interested in vain distractions than the reality of Britain's pygmy-like status on the military front, compared to its rivals.

The "austerity agenda" has now morphed into the "Brexit Agenda" since the referendum, but the goals are almost identical, in terms of its internal impact on the country.
The Libertarians in government behind the "austerity agenda" are the same people behind "Hard Brexit". They believe in a stripped-down state because their faith in the free market comes above all else, and clouds their judgement over the positive effects that government can have on society. Because they believe that free market will always do things better than government, it follows that for their agenda to succeed, "government", by definition, must be seen to "fail". If government is seen as efficient, this hampers their agenda for the free market to take the place of government services. To give one example, the success of the temporarily re-nationalised "East Coast" train service is an "inconvenient truth" that goes against their belief that privatised rail must, by definition, be better than state-owned rail. The fact that no other countries in the world operate train services like they are done in the UK (because it is seen by outsiders as madness) is besides the point. Following this logic, only if society sees that government cannot function will society believe that the private sector is better than the public sector.
The government's agenda is to prove to society that government cannot work. As they see it, this is the only way that people at the lowest rungs of society can be pulled from their torpor of dependency - the toughest form of "tough love". If the result from this agenda is mass poverty, homelessness, an epidemic of crime and a breakdown of the social fabric, this is just a "means to an end".

Put in this light, the "Brexit Agenda's" advocates inside government are working to effectively bring down parts of the system of civil administration from within. It is about destroying faith in government by deliberately destroying government. Because its advocates are from a wealthy elite that pays for services that it does not use (such as the welfare state), the predictions of economic collapse following a "Hard Brexit" perversely work in their favour, as a trashed economy would be ripe for the picking. This also explains why, on the other hand, those in the corporate elite who are the beneficiaries of government largess (while the rest of society gets a metaphorical kicking) are tied to those in government. The corrupt connection between Westminster, Whitehall and the corporate elite, through the common thread of the establishment, explains all this.

The largess promised on the landed elite after Brexit, like the example Michael Gove has given, is another form of patronage in a broken system. The "managed decline" that was first seen after the Second World War was, for some parts of the country, not rectified by being in the EU, but was used by the Thatcher government and its successors as an excuse to "restructure" a society stripped of union power. This explains why there are parts of the country, in the North of England and South Wales, that look more like a kind of urban dystopia, plagued with under-investment, unemployment, ill health and crime.
This policy of deliberate "managed decline" is another facet of the "stripped-down" version of the state envisaged by some Brexiteers. The parts of the country (and the economy) that are dynamic should be encouraged; the parts that are not should be allowed naturally to "die". This is a form of Social Darwinism by another name.

Whether the advocates of this agenda are dangerously delusional or deliberately dishonest is unclear; but the outcome for the rest of society from this agenda is as clear as day.