Theresa May is no ditherer

Theresa May's critics were always going to pounce, says Peter Oborne in the Daily Mail. Last week's resignation of Sir Ivan Rogers, Britain's ambassador to the EU, was the cue to do so. Walking out "in a huff", Rogers accused May of "muddled thinking" on Brexit. This week, The Economist, which has a "long and wretched history" of political misjudgements, ran a cover story with the tagline, "Theresa Maybe: Britain's indecisive premier".

I believe that the article, which is peppered with "serious errors" and misrepresentations, has been "planned for some time by powerful interests at the heart of the British Establishment" intent on trying to stop Brexit, says Oborne. The Economist is "beloved" by the pro-EU establishment. Its largest shareholder is Italy's Agnelli family.

But does the central charge, that she is indecisive, hold? After six months, says The Economist, it is "hard to name a single signature policy, and easy to cite U-turns". Some are welcome the plan to put workers on company boards and make firms list foreign employees but others "smack of dithering": Hinkley Point, the Heathrow runway, a possible transitional deal with the EU after Brexit. "The cause of this disarray could be that Mayism itself is muddled."

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She has promised to make Britain the "strongest global advocate for free markets", says The Economist, but she also talks of reviving a "proper industrial strategy" and has provided "unspecified support and assurances'" to Nissan to persuade the carmaker to stay in Britain. May could "find her feet"; Margaret Thatcher's first term, after all, was "shambolic" too. But the danger is that she will turn out to be another Gordon Brown, who was similarly "thin-skinned" and whose need to "micromanage" paralysed his government.

May's "Delphic manner" can be "infuriating", writes Matthew D'Ancona in The Observer, but she has always been "cautious" and "unflashy". As puzzling as constancy is in a culture "addicted to change", this is to her credit. It is this "spirit of impatience" which underlies many of the recent attacks. Yes, she has made mistakes, but the idea that she "presides over a policy vacuum is nonsense". There have been green papers on school reform, corporate governance and work, health and disability.

Others, on industrial strategy, prison reform, housing and social justice, are in the pipeline. "Almost unnoticed, she is seeking to overturn her party's instinctive distaste for the state". Far from being "at war" with the "mandarinate", May's taste for structured, "patient, evidence-based policymaking" is tailor-made for the "punctilious minds of Whitehall".

Forget the image of May as an "uncommunicative vacillator", agrees Janan Ganesh in the Financial Times. It's "an emotional crutch for people who cannot believe that she means what she says". Listen to her speech to the Conservative party conference; read earlier interviews; and examine her work as home secretary. Her desire to control immigration and resentment of the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice are clearly evident.

These imperatives "do not imply so much as demand withdrawal from the single market", continues Ganesh. Beyond the issues surrounding Brexit, one can discern her desire to restore Britain to the slower, familiar nation of her youth, even at the expense of "economic dynamism". This version of conservatism isn't for everyone, but "reading it as indecision is a transparent coping mechanism for the liberal-minded". The Economist's cover story was headlined Theresa Maybe. "Theresa Maybe? If only."