She fully expected to face the wrath of hard-liners in her party. A bigger surprise, it seems, was the rejection of moderates. Ian Dunt, the author of “Brexit: What the Hell Happens Now,” said Mrs. May had been so preoccupied by fractures within the Conservative Party that she failed, until now, to address splits in the country.
“She has been a divider,” he said. “It’s only now she presents herself as a pragmatic centrist option. You need to build a reputation as a unifier. It’s not enough to turn around after two and a half years and say, ‘I’m a unifier.’”
Oddly, Mrs. May’s weaknesses as a politician — her dislike of the spotlight, her lack of a political tribe — were part of why she was chosen as prime minister in the first place. In 2016, the country was exhausted with upper-crust game players like David Cameron, her predecessor, who had casually led the country into turmoil by promising a referendum on leaving the European Union, never expecting that the Leave side would win.
To a fragile, stunned country, Mrs. May looked like a “safe pair of hands.” The daughter of a small-town vicar, she was diligent and cautious, not a member of any of Westminster’s political camps, or party to back-channel conspiracies. She had shown toughness and flashes of bravery in six years as home secretary. In the evenings, when her colleagues fanned out to social clubs and dinner parties, she would dine alone with her husband in the Commons.
Some of this aloofness was natural: When she rose through the party, she was one of very few senior women.
“I think she’s always been a bit of an outsider in her own party,” said Ayesha Hazarika, an author and political commentator. “I think she always cut quite a lonely figure, but then a lot of women on the Labour side did, too. I wouldn’t fault her for her historic lack of tribe.”
Source : Nytimes
