In the period between spring 2017, when Theresa May called an unnecessary election and promptly lost her majority, and summer 2019, when she finally lost her job, the then prime minister got into a strange habit. Every few weeks, when her Brexit strategy hit yet another roadblock, word would go round that May was to make an intervention. The lectern would come out, rolling news crews would cut to footage of the closed door of 10 Downing Street, and everyone in the bubble would collectively hold their breath. A change of strategy? A resignation? Another snap election? What could we glean, from the choice or position of the lectern? What did it mean?
Then finally, perhaps 45 minutes later than we’d been promised, May would appear and read an extremely short statement to the effect that nothing whatsoever had changed and she would be continuing on exactly as before. And, like Charlie Brown going to kick a football, we would fall for it every time. For this political equivalent of a meeting that could have been an email, the entire politico-media complex would have cancelled its evening plans (which did wonders for May’s write-ups in the papers, I’m sure). More than once in this period I received a bollocking from a New Statesman colleague on the grounds that my increasingly hysterical questions about what was wrong with May were demotivating to everyone else in the WhatsApp group.
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