Breathe in … and relax. When your first six months in office haven’t gone at all to plan and everyone is accusing you of having done nothing except get muddled, there’s only one thing for it. Go back to the beginning. When Theresa May made her first speech outside Downing Street after becoming prime minister, she spoke passionately about social injustice. About how if you were poor you would die nine years earlier, how if you were black you were treated more harshly by the criminal justice system. That kind of thing.
She hadn’t really meant any of it, which was why she hadn’t got round to doing anything about it, but it had gone down well enough with the punters. So for her first major speech of the new year, the Maybot chose to channel a happier time. A time when people still believed in her. The previous six months had never happened. In her mind’s eye she was still standing outside Downing Street on a July afternoon and not stuck in a room in the Royal Society building off Pall Mall in January talking at the Charity Commission AGM.
“If you’re poor,” she began, “you are likely to die nine years earlier; if you’re black …” Inevitably, it was all said with much less commitment than before. It’s hard enough making the same pitch twice, and nearly impossible when the strain of office has given you the appearance of a computer-operated zombie. Inevitably, too, it didn’t go down quite so well the second time round, especially in front of an audience of rightly sceptical public sector and charity professionals.
Still, on the up side, at least she wasn’t having to pretend to sound intelligent when talking about Brexit. Anything but that. Cheered by that thought, the Maybot went on to explain her ideas for a “shared society”. Though “explained” and “ideas” might be putting it a little strongly. More like a few thoughts she had come up with over the weekend to take her mind off Brexit. Basically the shared society was a bit like David Cameron’s “big society”, only shared rather than big. And just as likely to be forgotten within a couple of months.
The Maybot wanted to help the little people. Not the really little people who were so broke and so fed up they would never dream of voting Conservative. She wanted to help the not quite so little people, those who were just about managing. Once again, a pall of deja vu descended on the room.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the Maybot got a little bit confused at this point. After blaming Cameron for most of the mess the country was in – she seemed to have forgotten she was home secretary in his government and had plenty of opportunities to make her voice heard during the referendum campaign – she then went on to give almost the exact same speech about mental illness that her predecessor had given the year before. She even promised to spend the same £1bn that Dave had promised to spend but had never quite got round to delivering.
Having struggled to the end of the shared cashless society, the prime minister reluctantly took a few questions, most of which were about Brexit. The Maybot clanked with frustration. Hadn’t she just spent half an hour trying to get off the subject? “The pound has decreased in value by 1% overnight since you said you were pursuing a hard Brexit,” observed one reporter. “Had the City got things wrong or had she?”
“Neither,” she snapped testily. The problem lay with the media, which insisted on reporting her accurately. It was time everyone stopped taking everything she said so literally. After all, it must be obvious to everyone that she really doesn’t know what she is doing, so it is grossly unfair to misrepresent her as someone who isn’t completely winging it. “I have been completely clear that Brexit means exactly the same thing I said it meant a couple of months ago,” the Maybot added gnomically. Though not necessarily what she said it meant the day before.
