For Theresa May, the worst has been saved for last. After taking her final prime minister’s questions, she will be driven to Buckingham Palace on Wednesday afternoon to perform the most personally disagreeable task of her time at the top. After tendering her resignation, which will be painful enough, she will have the even more hateful duty of recommending that the Queen invites Boris Johnson to become the new prime minister.
Her failings have been a major contributory factor to his ascent. Tory activists think he will deliver them the Brexit that she couldn’t and cheer them up after the torture of the May years. Tory MPs believe that he has the campaign skills to scupper Nigel Farage and squash Jeremy Corbyn. None of which is going to be much use to him in the critical opening weeks of a premiership that will inherit all the problems that defeated Mrs May and with some extra challenges of his own.
He will have to learn how to be prime minister. The schoolboy who wanted to be “world king” has spent many years lusting after the job, but that is entirely different to doing it. Many previous tenants of Number 10 will testify that no other role is an adequate preparation for the demands of the premiership. Tony Blair, a highly accomplished leader of the opposition before he moved into Downing Street, once told me that he didn’t really get the hang of it until he had been doing it for four years and he had the shock absorber of a landslide majority while he was learning on the job. Gordon Brown arrived with a decade as chancellor under his belt, but floundered desperately as prime minister. Boris Johnson has never been in charge of a public service department and was an embarrassment in the one cabinet position that he has held. » | Andrew Rawnsley | Sunday, July 21, 2019
