Theresa May, Salzburg and the "Brexit speech": a psychological portrait of narcissism

It has been a year since Theresa May's Florence Speech, where she set out what aims the British government had. A year on from that, almost to the day, we had the events of the informal EU heads' meeting in Salzburg.

Looking back over the events of the year that has transpired since May's Florence speech, we see a pattern of behaviour from Theresa May in her treatment of the negotiations with the EU. The "vision" that her Florence speech set out was never one that the EU could or would ever accept; it would break their own rules, for a start.
However, in the desire for the negotiations to move forward from "Phase 1", last December the EU agreed to a compromise - a "fudge" - on the intractable issue of Northern Ireland, where the UK agreed to a "backstop" if the UK failed to provide a solution to the problem of the NI border. Negotiations moved forward on the clear understanding that the UK would provide a solution to the EU in due course. However, the compromise was quickly backtracked on by the UK, who claimed a different "interpretation" to the wording of what was agreed with the EU. Meanwhile, the UK government have pushed back the submission of a "solution" to the NI border at every opportunity. Like an errant student, May has wangled extension after extension on the submission deadline of their homework to teacher. At some point, the teacher's patience is bound to snap.


Ending the indulgence

After nine months of this charade, it is not unreasonable for the EU to have felt duped. After doing what they could to move things forward for the benefit of Theresa May last December, they found out later on they had been "played". May's tactics seen in this way appear as those someone taking advantage of the others' charity, eking out negotiations with the EU by playing on their fears of May being replaced by a hardliner if they didn't compromise. On top of that, the British government's other strategy of getting the EU "on side" was to have their ministers going around the various EU capitals in a ham-fisted "divide and rule" approach that ignored the EU's hierarchy and institutions. Both these approaches seem to have convinced the EU that their indulgence of May's behaviour has only worked out against them, making May more brazen in her approach rather than more compromising. More on that in a moment.

May's "Chequers" plan was meant to have been a method of resolving the outstanding issues, including Northern Ireland, and also of providing the grounding for a future relationship. But given that the plan was only really there to hold together the opposing sides of her party, the EU's opinion seems to have been only an afterthought. Almost as soon as the plan's contents were public in July, the EU explained how they were impractical and broke the rules of the single market, as was obvious to anyone who understood how the EU functioned as an institution. The EU reiterated the possible alternatives; options that the EU had explained to the British government from the start of the negotiations.
So May went into the Salzburg meeting, with the EU having already rejected key aspects of the plan, as well as even a large part of her own party. When she talked to the other EU heads on Wednesday, the EU leaders were then stunned by the tone of her "pitch" to them: that her Chequers deal was the only one she could offer, she couldn't change it, and that the onus was on the EU to compromise. It was May's stubborn refusal to budge that had provoked the strong words from Donald Tusk and others on Thursday, and which led to May's bizarre and tetchy press conference that afternoon.

As the expectation was that some kind of "bridging" compromise was bound to be reached at Salzburg (i.e. one that could see a basis for further discussions in October), what had made the actual conclusion so abrupt had been May's inability to be flexible. One wonders if her personality is the culprit, as it has been for most of her failings as a national leader. As she appears to have a personality indicative of some pathological form of narcissism, this might explain how she could have arrived at the Salzburg meeting with such a delusional view of how events would transpire. While this can only be conjecture, circumstantial evidence of how she runs her government within a "bunker" of sycophantic advisors suggests that May doesn't know what the EU is really thinking because no-one around her is inclined to tell her. In this way, her brittle ego only listens to people she trusts, and those she trusts can only maintain that trust by telling her things that don't contradict her own world-view.
 Bringing in a comparable (and relevant) example from reality television, is "Amy's Baking Company". This is a company that featured on Gordon Ramsay's well-known programme, ran by a woman (the eponymous Amy) who is literally incapable of handling criticism.

Ramsay is incapable of getting even basic points across to Amy, who is defended from the rest of the world by her "enabling" husband. Any criticism is seen as an "attack". As a result, Ramsay decides he's wasting his time trying to change someone who cannot change.
Tusk and the other EU leaders seem to have reacted to May's stance on Wednesday in a similar way: for them, May's inability to compromise at this late stage seems to have been the last straw.

With May's position being so tenuous after the Chequers plan bombed with her own party, it's also possible that May felt she needed to talk "tough" at Salzburg in order to shore up her position for the party conference. But if that was true, then this was also the fault of her poor strategic thinking; something that is another of her unfortunate traits. Talking tough to the EU would make it all the harder to climb down in her party's eyes in time for a compromise in October. If she had compromised as the EU was expecting her to do, the party conference would have been tempestuous at best, putting at jeopardy the compromises needed for any positive outcome in October. She would have needed to tell the party a few unpleasant home truths at conference about what was realistic to achieve; but again, May is not temperamentally the type to make waves, and her stubborn streak also extends to her political durability.
When she returned to the UK, she then made an impromptu speech.


In the mouth of madness

After May's plan was rejected by the EU, the manner of that rejection (and Tusk's "instagram") seems to have affected May quite profoundly. Her surprise at the EU's inability to compromise seemed genuine, and thus the rejection of her plan she took as a personal affront. She had been publicly shamed, as far as she was concerned.
But with the way she approached the Salzburg meeting, she seems to have taken the attitude of the ever-indulged narcissist: as the EU had always compromised over her wishes, why wouldn't they do so again? Couldn't the EU see that Chequers wasn't already a "compromise" as far as May was concerned? Therefore, it was the EU's "turn" to do the same. This seems to have been her take on the situation, going to Salzburg.
But again, it seems clear that May simply doesn't "get it": there are some things the EU cannot compromise on, such as breaching their own rules. This had been clear from the very start. But May, like the typical narcissist, just doesn't listen. She only listens to people that confirm her own bias.

The rationale for the impromptu speech on Friday afternoon may well have been aimed at securing her position with her party, but the tone of the speech seems to have been driven by narcissistic rage. She singles out Donald Tusk for criticism, and uses untruth and psychological projection to accuse the EU of being disrespectful; quite a bold accusation, considering how much the British government had taking the EU for fools for the last nine months, as mentioned earlier. Making liberal use of her infamous "death stare", it is a speech that is designed for domestic audiences; but to the objective observer, it looks like the speech of someone on the verge of losing all self-control (and self-respect). She then reiterates her inability to compromise, demanding like she did in Salzburg that the EU must shift their position, or there would be no deal.

The effect of the speech on the talks, given what she said, is to increase the likelihood of "no deal" even higher. With now less than a month before the last real meeting, and with the party conference likely to be belligerent towards any kind of compromise with the EU, May's behaviour has brought the talks effectively to an end.
An inability to listen, an inability to change, and May's fragile ego seem to have brought Britain into the mouth of the abyss.

The psychology of Conservatism and Nationalism: a "controlled environment", or is it just Narcissism?

Broadly-speaking, nationalism could be said to act as a psychological "comfort blanket". There is a lot to be said for the argument that people who are ideologically-conservative also desire a "controlled environment"; in other words, they require the psychological security of an environment where they feel "safe", where things are familiar, and where things don't change. This last point is the entire nature of Conservatism as an ideology.
The psychology of narcissism is inherently tied to this. The concept of a "controlled environment" is something that can be found in narcissists, who seek to have the last say in how people behave who they interact with, and require an environment where things stay exactly as they are, in a state of controlled inertia.
In the same way that the concept of change scares a conservative, "change" terrifies a narcissist. Both react to "change" as a threat, as it challenges the carefully-constructed environment that they have created for themselves. The carefully-constructed environment both narcissists and conservatives have created stems from insecurity.

The family member or partner of a narcissist, if they allow the narcissist to have their own way (as it is the easiest way to avoid conflict), will find decisions made for them by the narcissist, their possessions are no longer their own, and the company they choose no longer a matter of their free-will. The narcissist is a "control freak" at heart, because of their innate insecurity. That insecurity inhabits itself through the establishment of a "controlled environment" at home, and an irrational (and unethical) desire to impose their will on to others in the world in general; the world must be moulded to suit the narcissist's desires, rather than the narcissist adapt to reality.
This can also be exhibited as an intense and pathological inability to change their views (i.e. stubbornness), even if that causes them (and others) far more problems than it would if they had changed their mind in the first place. This is more accurately a kind of neurosis - mental incapacity - where things must be done as the narcissist decided, as to admit that they were wrong would create a crisis of confidence in their own fragile sense of self-esteem. In Britain, Theresa May seems to be a good real-world example of a personality that is so neurotic (and innately narcissistic) in her inability to change, she would rather the country go to ruin than bring herself to admit her judgement was wrong.
Again, this stems from insecurity, as it is psychologically difficult for the narcissist to change their perspective on the world; they see it as easier to get the world to change for them. The narcissists' sense of self-esteem is so fragile that anything that threatens to change their own carefully-constructed and cast-iron perception of the world must be either disregarded or disparaged.
And when that "carefully-constructed perception" is destroyed, the reaction from the narcissist is the same as a child's tantrum: anger, fury, vindictiveness and spite at the source of their "pain". At their worst, the narcissist reacts to their world-view being shown as an illusory fantasy as the highest form of betrayal, lashing out at even those that care for them if they are unable to "get even" with the ultimate source of the "problem". Someone must pay for the narcissist's emotional suffering, even if it redirected at the innocent, or even those that they claim to care about the most. The narcissist's rage can be something fearsome to behold.

The behaviour above that describes the narcissist also applies to the ideological nationalist, and to conservative thinking on general. At its most toxic level, this can manifest itself as far-right extremism, such as seen in the alt-right or Islamic fundamentalism. This is the psychology of the "loser" who wants to get revenge on society. In the male-dominated world of the far-right, it is about the creation of a society where men are superior to women, culture is homogeneous, and unorthodox thinking is suppressed and persecuted; the logical conclusion of a narcissist's "controlled environment", writ large. This is the narcissists' "power fantasy".
 The psychology of Hitler is the most extreme manifestation of this type of "malignant narcissism" embodied in one person, as his "nationalism" was a psychological projection of his childhood insecurities, creating Nazi Germany as the manifestation of his disturbed ego. In a different manner, J Edgar Hoover is another example of someone with his own insecurities (also seen in his widely-reported dysfunctional personal life) who led the FBI as his own personal "controlled environment" through the tenures of eight presidents, from Coolidge to Nixon. In this manner, he ruled the USA as a "power behind the throne" for decades, using his position to indulge his own prejudices on the nation, with the power to potentially decide the fate of millions at his whim. In the end it was Nixon, another personality with a mass of insecurities, that oversaw Hoover's slide into irrelevance.

Going into the psychology of nationalism (and Conservatism in general), the core tenet is about people wanting to preserve things they way they were when they were a child. At the most extreme embodiment, Hitler seemed to have his own fantastical version of Germany in his head: psychologists have talked of him having a "God Complex" coming from his mother, who  died when he was an adolescent. In this sense, his idolization of Germany before the First World War (and his desire to unite all German-speaking peoples) may have come from the insecurity felt by the loss of his beloved mother; to equate pre-war Germany with the time his mother was still alive, which then morphed into thinking that creating a greater Germany would somehow assuage his feelings of loss for his mother. With other accumulated insecurities piled on top of this, such as his acquired hatred of the Jews, we see the blinkered, twisted vision of a man who seeks to create the ultimate "controlled environment".
Hitler is the extreme embodiment of this; at a more prosaic level, conservatives in general seem to psychologically hark back to a time when things were more "familiar", when the world seemed like a simpler, less unpredictable, place. This inevitably goes back to the time of their childhood. But the desire to "turn back the clock" can itself only come from the desire to change reality as it exists now; an irrational (and even unethical) desire to impose their will on the rest of society. This is the core psychology of the narcissist.

While this desire for "turning back the clock" can in some ways be just harmless fantasizing ("stop the world, I want to get off!"), there are plenty of examples of where this has led to a surge of narcissistic rage when this fantasy is resisted by others. The violence of the alt-right in the USA, and now the surge of far-right violence in Britain and Europe, are all signs of narcissistic rage. Unwilling to accept that diversity of opinion and culture is a normal part of life in the developed world, the far-right seek to express their frustration that they cannot "turn back the clock"; thus they seek to impose their version of a "controlled environment" by use of violence and intimidation.
At a different level, the same can be seen in Britain with the rhetoric of "Brexiteers", who talk of saboteurs, appeasement and betrayal. This is the same language that a narcissist would use when confronted with people who refuse to follow their commands. When this is writ large in supportive elements of the media, this harsh rhetoric only encourages others to carry out violence in their name.

The psychology of Populism and Donald Trump is the psychology of narcissism, in the same way that "Brexit" is the irrational psychology of narcissism. But the world cannot be tamed to follow his vision as the narcissist would like to think it is. The politics of "Brexit" and Donald Trump are about "nativism", and wanting to make society more homogeneous and more predictable, as it was when its supporters were growing up. If the world cannot be made to do as the narcissist pleases, then they will construct their own "controlled environment" at home where they can feel safe. This is the psychological root of American isolationism; and it is the logical conclusion that "Brexit" will take, once its architects see that the world does not care what they think, and cannot be cajoled into doing what they want.
The stereotypical old-aged conservative is the man (or woman) who is sat at home, alone and friendless, complaining to anyone who will listen about how the world has changed beyond recognition, how nothing is as good as it used to be, and how he no longer feels like he belongs in the world.
It is a sad existence, and one that is entirely self-inflicted.

Brexit and Britain's slow decline: a society falling to pieces?

Britain in 2018 seems like a country having a kind of slow-burning nervous breakdown. From a social point of view, the bonds that hold society together seem to be falling apart, while from an economic point of view, swathes of the country are populated by towns and cities that have simply lost their purpose, seeming to be there just because people happen to be there, not because the people really have anything to do there.
Both these issues, in the two links highlighted, come at the social and economic perspective from differing ideological ends of the spectrum, but the conclusion that can be reached appears similar: that Britain is socially-broken, and economically-moribund.

The nature of British society has fundamentally changed since the end of the Second World War. Like all developed countries, it has gone from being a male-dominated society, to one where women have a great role in the working world (note, I am not saying that women have "equal rights"; there is still a long way to go on that score). Society has become more racially-diverse (though, again, that does not mean racially-equal), and more sexually-liberal (generally-speaking; in some ways it could be argued to even have backslid, depending on the issue).
On top of that, social bonds have loosened, partly due to changing social attitudes, and also due to the changing (and more unpredictable) nature of work. The "changing nature of work" is partially a result of government strategy (or sometimes, lack of): in the last thirty years, the British economy has shifted massively in the direction of London, exacerbating a slide that had already began with the demise of empire.

Here is where the two articles mentioned at the start overlap in their concerns. The social bonds that have broken have done so as a result, at least in part, due to economic policy. The Libertarians that led the Thatcher government saw how the larger part of the population outside of the South-east of the country were being supported by the industries that were inefficient. Their solution was to either get rid of them, or if they didn't change, allow them to die. Thus we had the huge structural change of the economy from the 1980s onward, with a service-led economy that was only sustainable in the long-term for one part of the country: London and the South-east of England.
The social effects of this were not hard to predict, and are evident in every town and city outside of the South-east of England. In those towns and cities most badly affected by having their key industries disappear, the jobs that replaced them were primarily low-skilled, low-paid and low in productive value. In short, they were what could also be called "shit jobs", where job satisfaction was through the floor.
The vicious circle of this is that it affects all parts of the local community: unhappy workers are also unhealthy workers, low-skilled workers are much more likely to resort to alcohol or substance abuse, domestic violence, and so on. And then there are the unemployed, and unemployable, for whom these issues are even more acute. So the long-term effect is to create, on top of "shit jobs", "shit towns". Not surprisingly, there are even websites devoted to this whole issue.

This was all true before the financial crisis, where the economy outside of the South-east was funded by massive household credit and a large dollop of self-delusion, helped along by the self-interest of the The City. Property speculation is a "British disease" seldom seen in Europe; those countries that had succumbed to this mania (such as Spain) seem to have learned their lesson since the financial crisis.
Not so in Britain, where the self-delusion goes on and on, for lack of any rational alternative. An economy based on services alone cannot maintain a population of sixty million in the long-term. It is economically impossible. To paraphrase a famous political saying, a service-based economy might fund some of the economy all of the time, or all the economy some of the time, but not all of the economy all of the time. The Libertarians who led this structural change more than thirty years ago were not stupid; they knew that a service-based economy would leave half of the country in a permanently-moribund (or deluded) state. They just didn't care.
Bringing this up-to-date, the Libertarians that are leading the charge for Britain to leave the EU without a "deal", seem to be even less interested in the fate of those that are already falling by the wayside in society as it is. The potential consequences of Britain leaving the EU without a deal have been looked at elsewhere, but it is telling of the extent of Britain's decline that the country could be so easily hijacked by the dangerous agenda of these ideological extremists.

Outside of the self-contained bubble that is London and the affluent South-east, the decline of British society since 2010 is visibly evident. The surge in rough sleeping, the surge in food banks, the surge in drug use (even in the countryside), the surge in casual violence etc. etc. These are all unmistakable indications of a society falling apart. With government cutting local spending by half, with some councils already bankrupt or close to it, the predictable social effects are all there in plain sight. The government has an agenda that tells everyone that they no longer care; not about crime, not about poverty, not about the vulnerable.
Inequality in Britain has been high compared to other developed nations for decades, but the post-war consensus was a genuine attempt to reverse that. The Libertarian "project" of Margaret Thatcher quickly "restored" Britain's famed levels of inequality, with some of her advocates even claiming that inequality was a good thing. This is the classic response of a Libertarian. Since the Conservatives returned to power in 2010, they have "succeeded" in reversing all the good work that the previous Labour administration had done in reducing child poverty; in just seven years the Conservatives had "succeeded" in more than doubling child poverty levels, that had been previously halved over thirteen years under Labour. I suppose to a Libertarian, that would be marked as an "achievement"?

The Libertarian "project" that was started under Thatcher has now reached its logical conclusion with Brexit and austerity. After 2010, the latter was economically-justified by the government after the financial crisis on the grounds of necessity, even if there were few economists who could find any real evidence to support its imposition today; its justification was only ever ideological rather than economic. Support for Brexit was then led by a hard-right Libertarian faction with the Conservative Party itself (which itself had its roots going back to Thatcher's time), which has had effective control of the government since it won the referendum. In seeking a "Hard Brexit", they are pursuing what they see as Thatcher's undying wish: to convert Britain into a neo-liberal "utopia".

Politically and ideologically, then, it seems that Britain has run out of road. The ten years since the financial crisis have just seen Britain being led down the road of smaller and smaller gains for more and more economic pain, till the point that no-one can go on any more, as the fate of the "zombie" British high street tells us. This is the take that Pete North (in the linked piece at the start of this article) seems to have.
I have some sympathy with his wider point, but he offers no solutions. He offers Brexit as a "solution" in that it offers seismic change to the fabric of Britain's economy and society. Thus may be true, but the same could be said of declaring war on your nearest neighbour. It isn't a real "solution" if all it offers is chaos for the sake of chaos.

Arguing in favour of chaos isn't offering solutions; it's nihilism. British society deserves more than that; unless you think that British society isn't worth saving. But that (I would argue) would make you little better than a Fascist.
In this toxic social environment, it's no wonder we have "culture wars" between "remainers" and "leavers", where an ideological civil war is taking place at all levels of society; masquerading at times as a war of "them" and "us", it pits the working class against middle class, town life versus city life, even man against woman. Thus far, the "culture war" has remained, barely-concealed, just below the surface, only breaking through at isolated moments and flashpoints. Brexit has come to symbolize both everything that is wrong with modern Britain, and everything that must change to restore Britain. It is a "culture war" that has its roots going back nearly five hundred years.

It's true that, in the current state of affairs, this schizophrenia might only be properly resolved, one way or the other, by Brexit. It is the realisation of this that is so depressing.

Psychopathy in politics: callous indifference versus deliberate harm (2)

It's difficult for most right-minded people to think that their government (outside of war) is capable to deliberately seeking to harm people. But when the evidence smacks you right in the face, it's hard not to notice.
In in article some months back, this author wrote about how government actions can be driven by a desire to achieve goals, regardless of the wider cost to society. As alluded to in that article, this kind of "callous indifference", in its most inhumane form, can take the form of a dictator (such as Stalin) wiping out his opponents through willful mass starvation - the brutal logical conclusion of "the ends justify the means".
At a different level of indifference, the government of Theresa May created the "hostile environment", which has destroyed the livelihoods and quality of life of many British people (such as those married to non-EU citizens) and naturalized British citizens (such as the "Windrush" generation, and others). At the same time, the continuation of the "austerity" agenda has destroyed the livelihoods and quality of life of many disabled people in Britain in particular, as well as creating an antagonistic atmosphere in society towards those claiming welfare in general. The antagonostic atmosphere of the "hostile environment" also creates a situation where landlords are implicitly given a free pass to fall back on their prejudices to deny tenancy rights to any foreigner they are suspicious of.
This could all be documented under a policy of institutional "callous indifference". However, the British government is also guilty of going deliberately out of its way to make life almost impossible for many asylum seekers.

This is the sharp end of the "hostile environment", where indifference to harm transforms into active facilitation of harm to people. The highlighted link above explains how the British government makes an active policy of appealing against court decisions to grant asylum, even when the vast majority of those appeals fail. In other words, the government has a policy of denying basic rights to asylum seekers that have already been legally granted by its own courts. What's all the more extraordinary about this is that the government is wasting public money pursuing hopeless appeals, whose only function is to deny rights (that have already been legally-granted) to asylum seekers, and to prolong their misery.
Put into context, not only is this abusing the rights of legal asylum seekers, it is also misusing public funds in order to do so. As the government-sanctioned appeals simply stretch out the amount of time that asylum seekers are unable to receive government support (or the right to any kind of humane existence), this is not about "callous indifference" to harm, but active pursuance of harm towards asylum seekers. This is the logical conclusion of creating a "hostile environment": implementing a policy that actively seeks to make people's lives miserable, even those who are legally-entitled to (and ought to expect) humanitarian support from the state.
The fact that the government are effectively misusing taxpayers money to achieve this travesty is all the more sickening: taxpayers are subsidizing the active mistreatment of asylum seekers in the UK. The policy of the government to pursue appeals against granting asylum when there is no real evidence to support them is, almost by definition, an act of irrational institutional sadism. It is wasting public funds to be cruel for the sake of being cruel.

The term "hostile environment", by its very meaning, has malevolent overtones. To be "hostile" to people is to be threatening and to wish them ill. The "hostile environment" that the British government has created towards asylum seekers is one where their existence in the UK seems to be deliberately made as unpleasant as humanly possible, short of actually building internment camps for them (the UK already has some notorious "detention centres", ran by private contractors who are given more-or-less free reign, with little effective government oversight. The public prisons are, not surprisingly, in a similarly anarchic state).
To play devil's advocate, I suppose an argument could be made to compare it to the treatment of the French authorities, which generally create an environment where asylum seekers are left in a kind of neglectful indifference (and any camps are eventually disbanded by the authorities). In that narrow sense, could Britain's "hostile environment" be argued to be more "humane" than just letting asylum seekers live in camps in the British countryside, until they dispersed of their own accord, as seems to happen in France? This is still doubtful logic, as the "hostile environment" in Britain functions in much the same way as it would in France: in France it is administrative bureaucracy that encourages asylum seekers to migrate to the UK; when in the UK is it the "hostile environment" that creates a kind of Kafkaesque nightmare for them instead. There are no disorganized camps like in France, but UK policy turns asylum seekers into housebound paupers (if they are lucky), and has numerous "detention centres". Then there are those that disappear into the black economy as a result of all this.


A "compliant environment"

The term "hostile environment" has been replaced by "compliant environment", though few would appear to be fooled. "Compliance" is another term bathed in banal, institutional syntax, but describe actions that make pursuing cruelty active government policy. The policy hasn't changed; only its presentation has.
The term "compliant" follows from the notion that those who comply with the rules have nothing to fear; except that all the evidence has now shown that the government actively seeks to persecute asylum seekers who have already been proven in law to require humanitarian protection by the British government. It is the government who are failing to comply with their own "compliant environment". And going back to the case of the "Windrush" generation, these include people whose own documents have been confiscated by the government, either through gross negligence or callous indifference; documents that proved their legal rights. Again, the government show how they cannot be trusted to follow their own rules. It is those that are most vulnerable in society in this case who are the most likely to suffer; their rights taken away from them for the sin of choosing to take officialdom at its word.

The sense of betrayal, at discovering that the high moral regard that the British government is based on is really an illusion, must be strong with those who have suffered as a result of this. It is like if you discovered that your father, who had raised you and you trusted implicitly for years, is actually a monster. With the government, it is a case of: do as I say, not as I do.
Presiding over all this is Theresa May. Those who support her say that, in close quarters, she is kind-hearted and warm. This may be true, but her supporters also seem blind to the more realistic view that May is kind-hearted and warm to people she likes and understands; there is far more evidence to suggest that, outside of her narrow social circle, she deals with issues in a far more mean-spirited and narrow-minded way.
This may well come from her parochial and socially-conservative upbringing, which means she struggles to humanly relate to those outside of her own background, and is temperamentally resistant to change. When turned into an "ideology" or government strategy, the result is the "hostile environment"; in a sense, an instrument of May's own inner psychology. Her officials are meant to apply the rules as set out by her. The "Cool Britannia" of twenty years ago has turned into "Cruel Britannia" under Theresa May.
The moral hypocrisy of Theresa May and her government is what really stands out in this "do as I say, not as I do" philosophy. As an ostensibly religious person, it's hard to fathom how she squares her Christian morality with her government's treatment of asylum seekers, the "Windrush" generation, and the most vulnerable in society in general. The "hostile environment" is an immoral policy, reeking in antipathy, and used in a way that deliberately harms people.
And yet Theresa May is still a church-going, seemingly moralistic person (or claims to be). Ignorance cannot be an excuse, as the real-world results of her government's policy have been known for a long time. It is much more likely about cynical political calculation, as that has been her strategy ever since she arrived at the Home Office (these kinds of stories go down well with the party grassroots, as they make her look resolute on immigration). Besides, who cares about the suffering of those who cannot vote and have no voice? It's already been made clear that she doesn't care about the fate of even her own citizens, if they have opinions and lifestyles that are different from her, so making some "third world" foreigners suffer just for the sake of it would be even easier to sanction.

While the treatment of the "Windrush" generation could be called a policy of "callous indifference", for the government to misuse public funds to actively make asylum seekers' lives intolerable is nothing less than sadistic.