Continued from Part One.
What was Mayism? Or rather, what is Mayism – as it remains the ideology of the British state to this day. When Theresa May came to power at the age of 59, she was a virtual cipher: distinguished, stately – it was assumed – but a virtual unknown.
This scarcely mattered. In 2016, Theresa May had a free hand to rewrite British politics as she pleased. Her rivals had all exploded. After the referendum, the Tory right immediately despaired of its own project. Swept along in the narrative of crisis, and, still more, having spent a decade in obscurity while many of their views were made illegal, they had no notion of taking power. The Tory right stepped out onto the stage of history, and forgot its lines. They instead reorganised into the old “ERG” formation and hunkered down, waiting for someone else to carry through the project they were too shiftless to achieve for themselves. The defeated party of Remain, meanwhile, despaired of politics altogether. In its place came a crude disdain for politicians, which ascribes national problems to the ill will of a few people. They clung trembling to Theresa May as an anti-politician, a dutiful fixer who would clean up the supposed mess that democratic politicians had made. By July 2016, Leave, Remain – both had vacated the field, leaving only May herself.
It fell to Theresa May to decide what the Leave vote had meant, and few have since departed from her thesis. Two electoral mandates closely preceded her: one, in 2015, was for economic liberalism; another, in 2016, was for British nationalism. Theresa May had other ideas. Speaking in August 2016, May put it thus:
For the referendum was not just a vote to withdraw from the EU. It was about something broader – something that the European Union had come to represent. It was about a sense – deep, profound and let’s face it often justified – that many people have today that the world works well for a privileged few, but not for them.
In other words, the Brexit vote had not been the result of a particular grievance, but an inchoate and general one. The complaint was of not being listened to, forgotten about, ‘left-behind’ in a globalising world. According to May, the response was not to be reform on a national level, but more Listening – more subsidies; more provincial autonomy; more local politicians.
This view of British society was universally accepted. All could now agree that British politics would turn on regions, rather than on immigration, which had been the crux of the referendum campaign. Among Remainers, the old charge of xenophobia quietly fell into abeyance. May’s premise of forgotten provinces was accepted; it was simply argued that the left-behind were ill-served by Brexit, and had been tricked. The British right, too, eagerly accepted May’s definition. Indeed, the groan of the regions as described by May spawned a whole new ideology in Britain: Postliberalism. Like May, Postliberals are indifferent to immigration and Brexit. Like May, the problems of modernity are blamed on anomie; on the decline of the high street; on the dominance of London; on too much hardcore porn. The two Postliberal journals UnHerd and The Critic, which both emerge in this era, can therefore best be described as organs of Ultra Mayism.
The Leave vote recast as an inchoate gripe: this was the fateful decision of the May era. May declared that the Leavers were not a victorious majority, but a charity case. They needed to be listened to, but this would be a listening for its own sake – a listening to no end. “That sense of control” over immigration; “That sense of Englishness”; “That sense of Fair Play” – these are the slogans of the era, which replaces democratic choice with abstract representation. This does not resolve questions; it adjourns them endlessly in favour of the status quo. This approach was hardly new. It was the political philosophy of New Labour, which does not recognise the rights of majorities – only stakeholders who are to be held in a state of balance.
Of arguably greater significance was May’s personal style, a product of her particular suburban mien. As we have seen, after the referendum Theresa May’s brand of old-fashioned public service became the cultural touchstone of the era. It created a whole new idea of public life. In 2016, May the woman offered a return to moral order. The premise of Mayism was that liberal democracy had failed. The reckless gambling of elected politicians had brought Britain to a state of crisis, which could only be solved through a new spirit of law, conscientiousness, and quiet service. Flair, panache, and executive action were derided as relics of an irresponsible age. A figure like David Cameron was impossible in this era, and none emerged to replace him. Mayism knocks together the heads of the duly-elected, and demands that they “get on with the job”. After 2016, there was no consensus that an elected politician had any rights by virtue of their popular mandate. Increasingly, they existed only to be shouted at, investigated, disciplined, and thrown out if necessary. Not sovereign lawmakers, but employees on probation. One of the most beloved Mayite set pieces was Speaker Bercow screaming down at MPs over infractions of procedure. In the May era, the modal statesman is modest, dutiful, law-bound, and endearingly fusty. The ascent of drab police spies like Keir Starmer and Sue Gray can only be understood in this context, as can Rishi Sunak – whose manner would have earned him the same fate as Ed Miliband only a few years earlier.
But it would be wrong to readily accept May’s idea of herself. As we have seen, both Leavers and Remainers had every reason to throw themselves under her leadership: for Leavers, as the only one who could carry out their project; for Remainers, as the only barrier to populism, and their instrument of attack against liberal norms. These projects were contradictory, shown by the early row over ‘Henry VIII powers’ – first murmur of later difficulties. Nevertheless, May did not scruple to put herself at the head of both movements, and for half a glorious year she bestrode national life like a colossus. She was feted at the Guildhall dinner and Chatham House as the saviour of society. During those magical evenings Theresa May could look serenely into the future. She had reached the summit of her powers, not as a woman of duty, but as a consummate politician: one who is all things to all people.
Theresa May did little with her six months of supreme power. She had united the political nation under a new ethos of duty, but it was duty for its own sake – duty to no end. May had no settled views on domestic or foreign affairs. She talked briefly of Meritocracy, but dropped the idea after a month. Her policy, such as it was, was narrow and negative. An audit on wages was followed by an audit on Race. An audit on Modern Slavery made three.
Meanwhile, May’s all-party cartel was falling apart. Her symbolic jettisoning of popular sovereignty had an obvious consequence: the rise of the civil service, and the courts – which had both allied with the party of Remain. The self-conception of Whitehall and the judiciary matched perfectly with the new sentiments that May had created. They, too, were above the squabble and manoeuvre of politicians. They embodied a tradition of unshowy public service, and would defend the current social order in spite of all elections. Theresa May had ridden these sentiments to power; she could scarcely renounce them now. In November 2016 the judiciary launched an attack on the referendum result, answered with a demagogic appeal from the Leavers – which hadn’t been expected. The party of Remain called on May, its nominal chief, to rescue them from the danger. She obliged them, affirming to all that the courts were not subject to the elected power.
There could be no compromise with those who wished to overthrow a democratic vote. But Theresa May had come to power as the great compromiser, and never learnt a better trick. She drifted helplessly towards crisis.
To maintain the cartel, Theresa May needed a bigger majority. She would flood Parliament with new dyed-in-the-wool Mayites: indifferent to both Brexit and Remain, clamouring only for national unity. History has remembered the general election of 2017 as May’s great misstep. Ironically, this is because of the sentiments that May herself did much to create. The judiciary was not willing to let Brexit go ahead; May was unwilling to use Parliament to challenge the judiciary. It was the kind of impasse that only a general election can solve. But Mayite Britain, with its vulgar contempt for the democratic process, could only see this as opportunism. Great symbol of the new feeling was ‘Brenda from Bristol’, whose disdain for the coming election was celebrated by all as proletarian good sense. May had ridden the anti-democratic turn in British life as far as she could.
In the election of 2017, Theresa May was confronted by yet another one of her creations. From 2015-16 Jeremy Corbyn had been a peevish bore. But after the Mayite turn in sentiments, which vaunted fusty introversion and old age, he suddenly found himself transformed into a lovable curmudgeon; a funky grandpa; ‘the Absolute Boy’. This, combined with a genuinely demagogic appeal, was a powerful combination. May could have answered with an appeal of her own, but did not. She was the greatest master of political image; greater still than Blair. May had managed to unite the two sides of the referendum under her leadership with words and phrases alone. This was no small feat. But it would not avail her now. The time had come for decisions, for coalitions – coalitions that could not include everybody. But May still hoped to recapture the old magic, and launched a campaign of phrase and image. The result was demagoguery without demagoguery. She promised to crush “the saboteurs”, but the phrase was a hollow and without meaning. She did not offer Remainers a soft Brexit; she did not offer Leavers lower immigration and tax cuts. Theresa May ended up pleasing no one, and lost her slender majority.
But even this did not deter her. May still believed in the power of her phrases. Despairing of negotiations with the EU, and of appeals to the people, she still hoped that a grand rhetorical stroke would mollify all sides. One cliché about Theresa May is that her ‘Deal’ with the EU satisfied nobody. But this was the entire point; to May, her deal was part of the general return to moral order that her premiership had promised. She resented Remain for leaving the regions behind; she resented Leave for rousing them. Both would have to accept a deal of exhaustion as their penance. This was to be May’s final stroke against parliamentary democracy; neither side could achieve victory, both would simply be established as represented stakeholders in a baroque new system of rules. These were high phrases, and they may have worked in 2016. But both Leave and Remain had been radicalised by events, and had each begun to dream of a real victory. Alas, neither side was organised to take power. Removing the current Prime Minister would reopen a conflict that neither were ready for. Perversely, then, they let her carry on, sniping impotently from the side, united now in resentment rather than admiration. Just as in July 2016, the field was empty – May stood alone.
The party of Remain struck first. But its organisation, The Independent Group, soon collapsed. Next to move was the old triumvirate of Johnson, Gove, and Cummings. They promised to solve the impasse through executive action, not through compromise. Theresa May was no longer needed, and walked off the stage of history.
Or did she? Four years after her departure, Britain looks much the same as Theresa May left it. Popular sovereignty in Britain has never recovered from her famous sense of duty. Indeed, by 2023 it has been almost entirely replaced by Law as a moral category; representatives of the people are regularly herded, investigated, questioned, and arraigned like criminals. Opposition is still viewed through a regional prism, not an ideological one; to the British of 2023, the salient fact about Lee Anderson MP isn’t that he believes in the death penalty, but that he is from the North. Nor have Whitehall and the judiciary ever forgotten May and what she represented. They have since established themselves as the quiet and unshowy defenders of order, separate from and equal to the bickering politicians. Still dominant, too, is May’s critique of liberalism. A return of Cameronomics under Liz Truss was quickly thwarted, a thwarting that was cheered on by much of the British Right, who inform us that the Red Wall wants regional assemblies – not low taxes. Government spending is increasingly funded by lucre confiscations, and with Net Zero – May’s final act – the market economy is to be reorganised as a moral one. Public life is still dominated by pious bores, whose worldview begins and ends with a respect for procedure. Even Theresa May’s successor, Boris Johnson, was not able to escape the spirit of the age, and never regained his old swagger.
For her own part, Theresa May now sits on the backbenches as a national treasure, an echo of a more civilised age. Unlike many of her contemporaries, she has not worked up a portfolio of lectures, and is seldom found on the after-dinner speaking circuit. She harries her successors more effectively than Ted Heath ever did, declaiming to the chamber that Parliament has no right to act, and that unscrupulous politicians are once again leading the nation to ruin. She wonders aloud why division and debate can’t simply be put aside, in the interest of ‘getting on with the job’. Having accepted her premises long ago, few can now disagree.
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